


Scootertrash

by Eric P Landreneau (Shamandown)



Category: Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternative Energy, Bromance, Buddies, Car Chases, Energon, Gen, Hippies, Homebrew, Italian Character(s), Major Original Character(s), Motorcycles, Nevada, Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, Original Fiction, Quantum Mechanics, Underdog, fembot, soul
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-15
Updated: 2013-07-15
Packaged: 2017-12-20 06:07:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 42,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/883828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shamandown/pseuds/Eric%20P%20Landreneau
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An experimental little freak of an Autobot and a security guard stand between a malicious, brutish Decepticon and unimaginable power.</p><p>Set in the Movieverse, a decade or so after Dark of the Moon. Written before Age of Extinction, so none of that catshit's I mean movie's continuity is considered in this work. Human society has largely adjusted to the presence of the transformers, though not necessarily happily.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bailiwick

**Author's Note:**

> There may or may not be a standard for this, so I follow this norm:  
> Names of species are not capitalized, as in human, cat, or transformer.  
> Names of ethnic/cultural groups are capitalized, as in Dutch, Cherokee, Autobot or Decepticon.

Chapter 1: Bailiwick

It was one of those long desert highways, straight and black, stretching off through the dust and the sun to mountains on the horizon. Horizons out here seemed bigger than they were most places. This was the kind of road made for cruising, full-throttle on a steel horse, going so fast it felt slow again, the world falling behind you. This was a road meant for putting speed up like a barrier between you and your troubles, bringing you calm.

It wasn't the sort of road meant for a Vespa scooter way, _way_ past its prime... but there it was, rising up from the heat shimmer like a... well, exactly _not_ like a proud leviathan up from the sea. Rising up... backfiring, stalling... rising up again, thundering down the highway with all the might of a flatulating octogenarian. It had an engine that growled like a legion of depressed mosquitoes. It was the color of pea soup – the good kind, with the bits of ham, but that was only because of the rust spots. It had a brand-new cargo box behind the saddle – neon orange.

“Sonofabitch! Go!”

It had a rider.

Terry was used to his morning commute on his own hog, a classic-lined long-fork cruiser, throttle-down with the wind in his face, fast enough to stay cool, even in the desert. Fast enough to out-race your own worries, leave all your troubles behind. It was where he found his quiet place, somewhere over eighty with the engine and the wind screaming at each other and the endless sun coming down hard. It was a better wake-up than coffee.

The scooter was, in every way, and with great distinction, _not_ his chopper. He pawed at the unfamiliar controls, fighting to get the diminutive two-wheeler over forty.

The whining mosquitoes ratcheted up to a higher pitch, then fell silent. The engine sputtered and died.

“Goddamn murrafurra Eurotrash toy shitbox!”

Terry cranked the key almost hard enough to snap it, stomped the kickstarter and yanked into first. The scooter let out an elephantine fart and stumbled forward.

+++++

Maureen smirked when Terry entered the breakroom, hooking a thumb out the window to the employee lot. “Didn't know your hog could transform, Terry.”

“Just can it, Maureen,” said Terry.

“Used to make fridges that color fifty, sixty years ago. Granny had one.”

“I said can it. Ain't in no mood.”

“Yeah, well neither is Jones.” She slurped her coffee. “You better walk soft today. Some kind of inspection or something, Fed-types all over the facility. I'm kinda annoyed, having to stay late for you, but Jones is straight up pissed. He'd be even madder if he knew you were out all morning joyriding on a clown-bike.”

“Hell! Look, I woke up this morning and my hog was _trashed_. Engine torn all apart. Had to take her in, and that damn scooter is Mark's idea of a loaner.” He took a drink of water, swished it around, and spat mud into a potted plant. “Asshole thinks he's real funny.”

“ You know that ain't a real plant, right?”

Terry studied the plastic plant, scowling, watching the mud-spit squidge down into the faux-moss. Then he shrugged. “What about these inspectors?”

Maureen shook her head. “Real cagey, you know, Washington types. Snooping around inside. Heard they even got the new Vault locked off. Jones's been ridin' our asses hot all morning with them around.”

+++++

Terry ticked a few boxes on his tablet, thumbed the print scanner, and waved the truck onward. It moved off with little more than a hissing whine. All deliveries came on new-fangled hydro-lectric trucks; the big-wigs had something against any sort of combustion engines in the tunnels. Go figure.

Terry sat back in his chair on the in-bound side of the gatehouse to wait for the next delivery. He picked up his conversation with Bob, who was handling the out-bound side. “Weird thing is they weren't even trying to _steal_ it. I know how to hotwire a bike, and that's not what they were up to.”

Bob blinked lazily, eyes not leaving his ratty James Rollins paperback. “Who?”

“The assholes that trashed my hog! They weren't trying to steal it. They just tore the engine up. Told you, I woke up this morning and my bike's guts were all over the place. Looked like it'd been hit by a bear...” He stared off at the horizon, picking over what he'd just said. Something didn't make sense... ah, there it was! “Some kinda _steel_ bear,” he corrected.

Bob shrugged. “Heard the Decepticons got one as can turn into some kinda wildcat.”

“And just why would a 'Ceptic wanna trash my hog?”

“I dunno. Good taste?”

“What?”

“I told ya to buy a Buell, not that toilet-water-colored trumped-up crotch-rocket.”

“Say it again Bob.” Terry put his hand on the folding knife on his belt. He was only half-joking with the threat. “I know more about bikes than anyone in Beatty. You can spit on me and call me names, but no-one picks on my hog.”

Bob didn't even flinch, just kept reading. “Down boy.” He pointed over his shoulder. “You got another one.”

Terry huffed and puffed... and grabbed his tablet and stood to wait for the truck. Down the road stood the outer fence and the automated gateway, all shiny and new and packed with advanced security measures. Beside the gate stood a sign reading “Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository.” A few years back the Decepticons hit the country's other waste sites – they'd hatched some scheme to lord it over the humans by poisoning the water or building a bunch of dirty bombs or something. Autobots stopped them, but the other waste repositories had been trashed. That had put the Yucca Mountain project back on the table; it was one site, deep in a mountain, in the middle of nowhere, easily secured. The desert for miles around was packed with energon detectors, mines, auto-turrets and packs of remote-guided stalker drones. USAF prowled the skies night and day. There were no transformers – Autobot or Decepticon – anywhere near the site. The only way into the site without a major firefight was through the gates, burdened with heaps of access codes, past the scanners, schedulelers, dense defenses... and Terry. He brought what the DOE called “the human element” to security.

He flagged the truck down, interviewed the drivers with all the form questions, scanned the manifest, matched the security codes, inspected the seals for tampering, dotted his T's and crossed his I's. He shot the breeze for a second with the crew, then waved them on to the inner gates, and the gaping maw of the tunnel into the mountain. The protesters had managed to spray the words “roofies 4 Gaia” on the side of the truck. Terry chuckled. That was a new one. Someone would have to spend hours scrubbing it off.

The original plan had been for the waste to come to Yucca Mountain from all around by rail, but that idea was scrapped; too easy of a target, now that they knew that the 'Ceptics wanted the radioactive waste. So they'd built a new kind of transport cask, small enough to fit inside reclaimed standard shipping containers that already had a nice, beat-up, natural look to them. New-style hydro-lectric rigs were common enough that they didn't stand out. DOE kept mum to the public about the shipping schedules, no matter how much they grumbled. For two years every shipment had made it to Yucca Mountain, on time and undetected. Decepticons weren't the only masters of deception.

Terry looked back at the outer gate. Two years after the site opened for business, there were still protesters marching in the shade of the welcome sign on the other side of the massive electrified fence. They held up signs and chanted “Nevada aintcha trashcan! Nevada aintcha trashcan!”

Terry snorted and got back to his seat in the shade of the gatehouse. “Hippies.”

Bob grunted. “Whaddya think about Buenos Ares?”

Terry scowled.”What about it?”

“Dontcha catch the news, kid? 'Sudden Catastrophic Deluge' is what they're saying. Power's out, communication's down, and all the big-wigs are hush-hush, saying the disaster's being assessed.”

“Oh.”

“They're stressing it was just a storm. Just a normal storm.” He smiled knowingly.

Terry hummed. “You thinkin' it's Decepticons?”

“I'd bet. It always is, ain't it?”

“Yep. Assholes. Wonder what they're plotting this time?”

“Wonder why they keep trying.”

“Thought it was over when Prime trashed Megatron. He was worse than ol' Bin Laden was, but these new characters are a step past even him!”

“Eh, we'll nab 'em all sooner er later.”

The day grew hotter. Trucks came and went in a malaise of routine and check-boxes. Terry itched for the thrill of speed, throttle-down and wheels blazing, but reminded himself how lucky he was to have a job at all.

“Lotta shipments today,” said Bob.

“What I don't get,” said Terry as he settled back into his chair, turning his face into the blow from the little desk-fan, “is we let the Autobots settle here. Let 'em _and_ their civil war get nice and cozy on our planet. We do that, and they can't even clue us in on some new tech, some cheap energy so we wouldn't have to store all this crap.”

“We'd still have tons of it from before. 'Sides, most of this is leftovers from makin' all those nukes we used to repel the last big 'Ceptic invasion.”

“Oh.”

Bob turned a page. “Anyway, I wouldn't be so quick to talk myself out of an easy government job, if I was you. We've seen a lot of trouble since they dropped in. But lookin' at the bright side, all that rebuildin' and the new industry they _have_ given us pulled this country outta the bog.”

“Yeah, and what'll the construction crews do when they've finished putting Chicago back together?”

Bob shrugged. “'Ceptics'll have busted something else by then. It's what they're good at. Assholes.”

Terry snorted. “Not all by themselves.”

It's easy to feel the air go cold in an uncooled gatehouse in Nevada. Bob snapped his book shut – made a big noise, even for a paperback – and looked Terry in the eye for the first time that day. “You weren't there.”

Terry lifted his hands, placating, “Hey, sorry man. I didn't mean--”

“You don't say nothing about Optimus and the Autobots, and I won't say nothing about your bike. Allright?”

“Allright. Sorr-”

“Allright. I got work to do.” Bob grabbed his tablet and stood. He paused for a moment, touching the picture of his wife he had taped to his monitor, then limped out of the gatehouse to check out the next out-bound truck.

...Leaving Terry feeling like a dog.

He was still struggling with how to try to apologize when he heard the outer gates buzz and open. His head snapped up, eyes wide, then narrowing. There wasn't another scheduled delivery for half an hour, and _nothing_ happened at Yucca Mountain off the schedule.

The gate opened, and an SUV drove through... followed by another... by a small convoy of plain black SUVs and white cargo vans. They had government plates, but no other markings. Terry flagged the lead vehicle down, his hackles rising.

There was one small marking, under the door's handle; just the word DARPA, stenciled in simple block letters. Whatever was going on, Terry knew he wanted nothing to do with it. The window slid down when Terry knocked, hitting him with a blast of AC, and he stared into his own reflection in a pair of mirrored aviators. The man wearing them was bald, thin, and had a face made for expressing disdain for inferior beings... which it was doing right then.

“You guys get lost?” said Terry.

The guy showed an ID badge, which named him “Mr. Braithwait.” All he said was, “We're from DARPA. We have business inside.”

Terry tapped his tablet. “Don't see you on the schedule.”

“We have business inside. _DARPA_ business.”

Terry shook his head. “Nope. You got business with me. Now, as I bet you know, this is the truck gate, where schedueled shipments of nuclear waste come in. _In_ _trucks_. We don't take tourists here.” He _could_ have let them through... maybe. Painting DARPA on a truck was easy, but getting properly-coded RF tags embedded in the vehicles was not; sure sign that someone with proper authority wanted these guys to get in. Without the tags, they'd have been blasted outside the main gate. But that didn't mean anything; Terry had his orders and, RF tags or not, these guys were off the schedule. Anyway, Mr. Braithwait's face made him want to grab his pepper spray. “Why do you think I should let you and your ID badge in?”

Braithwait snarled and brandished his badge again. “You see those letters below my name.”

“'SCI-U Clearance.'” He snorted. “ _Sensitive Compartmentalized Information._ I know. Yeah, so you got a clearance. Doesn't mean that-- wait. What's the _U_?”

Braithwait smiled. It wasn't pretty. “'Universal.' Means I eat, drink and crap info that goes _way_ beyond your narrow little bailiwick. Now open the gates.”

“Oh! Oh, whoa, hey!” Terry raised his hands in feigned placation. “Hey, sorry professor. Didn't mean to step on your airs there.” He raised his radio. “Yo Jones, got a little army a' DARPA skid-marks out here think they own the place. Advise?” He smiled back at Mr. Braithwait. “There, see, Jones is on the case. Meantime, my narrow little... ahem... _bailiwick_ happens to be a highly-secured nuclear waste repository, and I take my narrow little job pretty seriously. Clearance or no clearance, _I_ clear what goes through this gate.”

Mr. Braithwait leaned forward. “Little watchman, what part of--”

“Cool it, Merl.” The passenger, an asian lady with shades almost as big as her head, put a hand on his arm. “I like him. Let him do his job.”

Terry smiled at her, then scowled at the driver. “Yeah, Merl, just doin' my job. Now, shut off that gas-guzzling pile of tax dollars and get your people out in the sun to present their IDs. I'll try to expedite the inspection while--”

_“_ _Terry!”_ Squawked the radio on his belt.

Terry turned on his earpiece. He could already tell that this was going to be bad. “Yeah boss?”

_“_ _What the hell do you think you're doing?!”_

“ You expecting guests, sir?”

_“_ _Let them through!”_

“ They're not on the list sir. It's against regs to allow anyone through without pre-scheduled authorization. Just thinking about the security of the site.”

_“_ _You can wipe that smile off your face and cram it up your ass! Let them through._ _Now!_ _”_

It must have showed on his face that Terry had just been dressed-down. Mr. Braithwait didn't so much as wait for a go-ahead before stepping on the gas. He led the convoy toward the inner gates without any hesitation, knowing that they'd open for him, on _his_ schedule. Braithwait was a man used to doors opening for him.

Though two years of a good, steady job had helped him forget, Terry was suddenly and sharply reminded that he was a man used to seeing them shut.

His radio clicked on again as the convoy passed, and Jones' voice crackled in his ear. _“_ _You can't imagine how much ass you're gonna have to kiss to not get fired over this.”_

  
  


  



	2. Kismet

Chapter  
2: Kismet

Terry parked the scooter a few blocks from the Happy Burro. After the day he'd had, the last thing he wanted was for any of the other bikers to see him pull up on that spluttering little joke. Bob had stayed moody all day, giving Terry no opening for a real apology, and Jones had ridden his ass with spurs on for insulting the DARPA man. Didn't matter that Terry was only following regs, that Jones had never updated the schedule, e-mailed him, called, never sent so much as a carrier pigeon to give him the heads-up. All that mattered was that Jones got chewed out by some Washington big-shots, and needed an ass to chew on in turn. _Terry's_ ass.

Terry shuddered past the mental image and stepped up to the door. There were only a few regulars' hogs lined up at the hitching post. Good. He was in no mood to chew fat.

The Happy Burro was his kind of joint. A nice place... not that there was much to choose from in Beatty. The outside was paneled in desert-dessicated planks, while the inside was slightly less ghost-towny. It had cleanish tables and chairs, neon beer signs, Steppenwolf gliding from the jukebox, pool tables in the back... everything a biker could want. He hunkered in his booth and sipped a Corona while waiting for his chili.

“Didn't hear your hog pull up, Terry,” said the waitress as she leaned toward him, one hand down on the table, the other holding his dinner up like a prize. Alana was friendly with all the regulars, and cute too. Sure, she was a little worn from a few too many years of biker bars and desert sun... but Terry wasn't one to talk in that case. Getting a little rough on the outside only helped one stay softer where it mattered, the way he saw it.

His smile was a bit more of a wince. “Little marital spat over the state of her engine. She's cooling off at Mack's shop, workin' out some problems.” He didn't feel much like chatting, but it never paid to ignore your waitress.

She cocked her hip, smiling flirtatiously. “Careful there. I hear when Mack starts workin' on a girl's engine, sometimes they don't wanna come back.” She set down his chili.

“Thanks. Hey, Mack does good work, so I just don't ask questions.”

“Long as she comes home happy, right?”

He shrugged, smiling. “All that matters.”

“You know, you're an easy man to get along with.” She winked and swayed off through the tables.

_Was that some kinda invite?_ Terry had never been so good at that sort of thing, at least not sober. He took a swig of beer, rolling it around to feel the cold on his tongue. _Well,_ he thought, _invite or not, a little flirting's always welcome. Least I can say something good happened today._

A hissing sound, subtle but piercing, dopplered up; something approaching. It didn't sound like any bike he knew, but it pulled right up to the rail out front, then the sound cut off. Terry watched the front door to see who it was... and nearly choked on his beer.

He gulped and hissed “Hot damn!” under his breath.

The woman standing in the doorway was at least six feet tall, all lean, long limbs and the right curves to look completely soul-meltingly, short-tighteningly _hot_ in a leather vest, black boots and blue jeans. He watched her cross the room to the bar, blonde braid swishing behind her, all the way down to the upper slopes of her bum. Terry would have tried to be a little discreet, but the whole room was staring at her. He figured she must be used to it, so he oogled without restraint. He didn't even notice the globs of chili go full-lemming off his spoon and onto his fly.

The biker bitch – and the term here applied with full respect and honors – talked to the bartender... and the bartender pointed right at Terry.

“ Aw, hell!” Now he scrambled, knocking the chili off his pants onto the floor, rubbing at the greasy stain.

She looked over, gave him the up-and-down, and grinned. That look could have turned him to stone... well it did, part of him at least. The woman was dangerous, he could tell. But whatever she wanted with him, he wanted with her, and then some.

She slid into the booth across from him, that smile of hers locking him in place. “Hi,” she said. “Terrence Wharton?” She held out her hand, leaning across the table. “Angelina Cooke. Such an honor to finally meet you.”

“Uh...” _Damn, she's tall even when she's sitting_. He shook his head, blinking. “Um, yeah...” He took her hand and shook it. She had a strong grip, but really soft skin. “Yeah, I'm Terry...” His eyes followed the way her cleavage shifted each time she shook his hand. “Nice to um...” He kept shaking her hand. _I could just dive in there._

“ Er...” she laughed, which added to the show, then took her hand back. “' _Meet me?_ '” She draped each arm across the back of the booth, flexing her shoulders back, and the rest of her just a bit forward.

“Um, yeah, that.” He tried to imagine motorcycles to calm himself down, but she kept showing up, draping herself on them in very impractical postures. Did not help. Then he thought of _his_ motorcycle, the way he'd found it this morning outside his house, engine all torn up like something out of a slasher flick. That did the trick. Tricked the prick. He let out a breath and leaned back, managing to express some semblance of ease. “Sorry, I don't do this often.”

“What? Talk to pretty girls?”

“Ahem, well, no. I mean, I talk to pretty girls, sure... but I don't talk to absolutely brain-meltingly gorgeous strangers at the Happy Burro with a chili-stain on my jeans at the end of an otherwise totally crappy day... all that often. Glad to meet you, but I'm also kinda waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“How bout your pants instead?” She watched him choke on that one for a few beats, then howled laughter. “Just messin' with ya! Look, I'm a freelancer for _Western Hawg_. The eZine? Check it out. Great site. I'm putting together a scoop on drag-racers, and I--”

Terry's blood ran a little cold. “I don't race no more. You know anything, you know that.”

“ Yeah, I know.” She knew he'd thrown up walls, but she barreled on anyway. “But I'm writing about the mind-set, the way racers think when they're on the track. Instantaneous decision-making. Instinctual _knowing_ of their machines, of the laws of physics. I want to get _inside_ your head.”

_And I wanna get inside your--_

_Klomp!_ There it was, the other shoe dropping. He was split, scared. Yeah, he could remember the feeling, the dropping-away, something way more intense than he ever got just cruising on his hog. But thinking about that brought up all the other memories, of the last time he'd raced. There'd been a lot of races before that, a lot of wild dreams... but it was hard to remember them, past the memory of that last catastrophic run down the track. He pushed them away, shaking his head. “I--” His voice caught. He took a breath, tried to retain some dignity. “Look, I won a few trophies in my day, but so did a lot of guys. So why me?”

She looked at him like he'd asked her how to spell “fun”. “C'mon. You know why. Everyone's read the numbers. If not for the accident, you'd have broken every record in the sport.” She laced her fingers, put her elbows on the table, and leaned forward. That got his attention right back. She pointed with her index finger, punctuating each word, though his eyes had a hard time staying on her hands. “You were on the edge of _greatness_. You were pushing your mind, your bike, yourself way beyond where anyone had ever gone. _That's_ why I want to feature you.”

His heart was pounding, the memories replaying. If he tried, he could see past the flames and the blood, remember the way it had felt. There'd been something different in the air that day... no, something different in him, a well of potential ready to overflow. He'd already won the race before he even got on his bike. It'd been a sure thing. Destined. He took a long breath through his nose, let it out slowly. “Look, um...”

“Angelina.”

“Angelina, look, this is a really hard thing for me. What you're asking is... You want me to go right back to the edge of...”

“I know. Look,” she put her hand on his arm. “Don't say no yet. You wanna just tell me about it, off the record? I race too, so I... maybe I could get it.”

He hesitated. “I... I've never told any...”

“Try it.” It was a subtle shift, her fingers curling just a bit more around his arm, giving a little more pressure, a little invitation of comfort. “Off the record, just talking. It could help.”

+++++

A couple of beers later Terry held the door for Angelina. “So, tomorrow then?”

She nodded. “I'll meet you here at 7. Don't keep me waiting.” She swung a leg over her chopper.

“Don't worry. I'll-- _Whoa!_ ” His tongue tripped up while his brain finally registered what he was seeing. Her chopper was really a _chopper_ , a hand-built science experiment. Like something off of _Top Gear_ or the cover of _Popular Science_. It was big, midnight blue, long-forked, with a massive engine, and had a real fat ass. That is, it had two fat rear wheels, tucked in nice and cozy right next to each other, with independent drive trains on the outside. It wasn't actually a motorcycle, but some kinda franken-trike. “Wha... that's your bike?”

She smiled and pressed her thumb to a screen between the handlebars. The beast purred to life. “Just something I'm borrowing. Told the builders I couldn't feature a monster like this unless I got to know him. Hydrolectric engine, but this thing's got enough torque for a truck.” She slapped a rear fender – it had two. “Independent suspensions and drive trains for the rear are computer-balanced. This thing owns on the drag strip, but it can corner like a Lotus.”

“ No joke...” Terry whistled appreciatively.

She tossed her braid over her shoulder and arched an eyebrow. “Yeah. Give me a good scoop tomorrow, and maybe I'll give you a ride.”

“Awesome.” _Damn, she's got me tied up like some high-school virgin_ _._ Actually, he wouldn't have minded being tied up, not if she was involved. She fastened her helmet, and Terry couldn't shake that this was one of those moments he was going to miss the boat, that he'd regret not saying something. _Gotta jump on the grenade, man!_ He held out his hand. “Hey, um... thanks. For listening. Kinda takes a weight off.”

She took his hand, shook it. “No problem. It's what I'm good at. And remember to look up those articles.”

“Thanks, I will.”

She shocked him then by turning his hand over and kissing the back of it. “See you tomorrow, Terry. And don't take any crap from Jones and those Washington goons.”

She backed out then, franken-trike making barely a whisper, whipped the hog around in an impossible sort of inside-out reverse donut, then shot off out of Beatty.

Terry resisted the urge to skip as he made his way back to the damn scooter. He might have tripped if he'd tried. He felt light-headed, though that may have been due to prolonged blood displacement. _What a freakin' turn-around of a day!_ He didn't even mind the sight of that pathetic scooter Mack had saddled him with. It wasn't just the flirting, the attention, the fact that this red-hot bombshell had dropped right in his lap – him, a used-up depressive scooter-bum gone paunchy and soft from a job that was all bureaucracy and catnaps. Thing is, she'd lifted a weight off his shoulders. It was kismet, her just dropping out of nowhere and knowing the things she knew. She'd been _researching_ him. She _cared_.

He'd missed that.

He strapped on the helmet Mack had supplied – cherry and white checks – puttered onto the road, and pointed the little Italian toy home.

For the first time in a long time, he was able to think about the day of the accident, the day his life had taken a sharp right-turn he'd never asked for. His star had risen fast on the sprint circuit. He'd started as a dumb kid, tearin' down highways, invincible as any seventeen-year-old. But when he started blowing away local street-bike competitions, then regionals, he'd picked up sponsors like fleas on a hound. He burned through the AMA, MiRock, then the NHRA. He'd made it all the way to the finals, roarin down' quartermile after quartermile, gagging the competition on his exhaust fumes.

It was the last race – for the big cup, the grand  prize, fame like he'd never imagined. Him, a real Cinderfella, against the veteran champ Perotti. One of his own heroes. He'd felt it that day, the touch of destiny. The trophy was _his_. Then, halfway down the track, something blew. In an instant the world changed, Glory turned her back, destiny gave way to catastrophe. He jerked to the right, swiped right into Perotti's fender, sent them both tumbling in flames. He survived; the other guy didn't.

What had followed was the familiar story; anger, guilt, depression, pain meds and booze, abandonment. He'd had a girl, fans, team-mates who made it all happen. He lost all that because he let himself fall way down into the deep-dark, and any time someone held out their hand, he tried to pull them down with him. No one with any brains at all would have stuck by him.

So he pulled his own way out, started all over, got to where he could take this security job when Yucca Mountain reopened. Got back on two wheels where he belonged – not a racer, just a classic cruiser, something made for the wide-open desert roads, with no-one else around. That and a few long, sober walkabouts around his home had just about cleared the cobwebs out of his head.

He shook his head as he puttered along the long, familiar road to home, not believing what had happened tonight. The guilt was the worst part, the part he'd accepted would never leave him. He'd jerked to the right, killing Perotti, when he just as easily could have pulled left. For years he'd lived inside that moment, going over it again and again, trying to find out _why._ Then here comes this Angelina chick, exhonerating him in three minutes.

_“_ _Mammals,”_ she had said, _“_ _big-brained ones like dogs and apes and people, we tend to go right.”_

Dogs wag their tails to the right when excited, more than to the left, and go to the right when approaching their master. Lovers tilt to the right to kiss. When the pressure's on, when big stakes rest on one person's snap decision, like a soccer goalie at a championship game when intercepting the next kick means winning or losing, when the whole team's hope for victory falls on them – almost always, the goalie will dive right. _“_ _Big brainiacs have been studying this for years,”_ said Angelina, _“_ _trying to figure out_ _why_ _. Look it up. It wasn't your fault.”_

Terry passed the edge of town, heading out to the old streamliner he called home, and he let out a sigh. No night had ever felt better. High stakes. Snap decisions. People go to the right. It wasn't his fault, just human nature. All the walkabouts had helped, but there'd always been that last dark corner of guilt in his mind. And here she'd come and wiped it away in a stroke.

He gave the scooter's flank an affectionate pat, then gave it a little more gas, expecting it to respond to his greater sense of happiness and light.

“ C'mon, ya heap a' macaroni. I got faith in you!”

The mosquitoes growled in rage, then the scooter exploded under him. 

There was no shrapnel and fire, the thing just _flew apart_. The saddle kicked up like a mule, tossing him into the air. Something caught him in the chest, yanked him down by the front of his shirt, and slammed him onto the asphalt. The scooter landed on him, pinning him down... no, _straddling_ him. Two red lights shone down on him, then metal segments angled down over them... the scooter _scowled_.

Then it spoke. “Eh! How comma you reeka de energon? Who's a you been talkin' to, eh?”

Terry screamed, thrashed, tried to get away. The metal man pinned him down harder. It leaned close.

“ Little man, I ask-a you a question. Now sing-a for me, or you not gonna like how I make-a you sing!” It's voice was lilting and fast, pouring out in a cheesy Italian accent as thick as the sudden bloom of cheap cologne that wafted from its pectoral vents.

Terry stopped screaming, went still as the words sank in. He looked left, right, met the thing's gaze, eyebrows knotted in bafflement. “What?”

“You-a stinky. Gotta de energon trace ona you like zits onna pizza-boy. You gonna tella me why, and you-a gonna tella me now, or I'll make-a me a prosciutto fromma your ass-meats!”

“I- uh- I...” Terry paused, then gulped. “You're a transformer?”

Appendages that looked far too much like a handlebar moustache bristled over its mouth. “Oh, looka ze brains boy we gotsa here! The meatball gotta sharp tinker on him, no?!”

Terry scowled, put his hands on the bot's chest-plate, and shoved it off. It was just a scooter, after all, and weighed little more than him. He rolled to his feet, growling. The bot jumped at him, but he gave it a sharp steel-toe to the chin.

It lurched back, wary now. “Hey! Watch wherra you kickin', meatball! Thassa the good side a' me face!”

“You're a transformer?”

“What's it to you?”

The hallmarks of the vehicle were all over this asymmetrical robot; the front panel and steering column made an oversized shin-guard, while the other leg was made more of internal components, a complicated jumble of tubes and pistons. Rear fenders, streamlining and all, served as shoulder pads. The useless locked cargo box was its backpack. Under all that décor was the usual intricate inner workings of a transformer – delicate, overarticulated hands, complicated joints, expressive face. It stood on its wheels, little articulated kickstands sticking out like toes to give it stability. But all the high-tech innards didn't keep Terry from thinking of the thing as anything more than a treacherous, ugly little scooter.

Terry unclipped the helmet, held it by the strap, and started swinging it. Transformers were tough, but he wasn't going to just let this one take him. Besides, it wasn't any bigger than he was. “What kind of punk-ass excuse for a transformer are ya, dressed up like as a rusty broke-down butt-ugly scooter?” 

“Hey, you watcha whaddayou say, or I make-a gelatto offa you face!”

“Your momma let you out of the house looking like that?”

The eyes flared a hateful red, and the razor-edged tips of its moustache quivered. “Don' you talk aboudda mamma mia!” It lunged at him again.

Terry struck out with the helmet, aiming for the face. Sure, the thing was metal, but it was also alive, and no living thing liked blunt force to the face. The scooter dodged and yanked the helmet away from Terry. It didn't clobber him, which it could have, but grappled, trying to pin his arms.

“Now looka meatball, I donna wanna hurta you. Why'sa you got energon readings all ova de place, eh? They get to you already?”

“I don't know. Ain't never seen any transformer before you.”

_Click!_

Scooter's eyes widened. “Oh!”

“ Yeah,” Terry snarled. “It's not a very big knife, but I bet you wouldn't want me to start wiggling it around, would you? Don't know what you got down there. Want me to find out?” Testing, Terry wriggled the blade a little deeper under the armor over its groin.

“Eep. Mi schprokets!” The thing actually simulated a gulp. It loosened its grip. “Okay, okay, Imma backin' off. Okay, see, all besta friends, no?”

“No.” Terry shoved the thing away and held up his knife. “What do you want from me?”

The fight drained out of the robot. It held up his hands. “Look, Imma just-a scout. I gotta _mizzione_. I don' meana no harm, but now you come out smellin' like that, I gotta know. Youza been talkin' to Latrines?”

Terry blinked. “Latrines?” He'd had a bit to drink, but he hadn't been “talking” to any toilets lately.

“ Si, Latrines. Decepticons!”

“Oh... No, no I ain't seen no _'Ceptics_. That's what we call 'em. 'Decepticon,' without the 'De,' dumbass. Maybe one's been around, but I ain't seen it. Maybe you're just chokin' on your own stink.”

“ Dat-za meana ting for you to say, meatball.”

“Why are you here? And why are you bothering me?”

“I-uh...” The robot twitched, looked down the road, then grabbed Terry's hand and hauled him onto the shoulder. He whirled around, ready to knife the little freak... and found himself threatening a rusty old scooter, leaning on its kickstand, leaking smoke.

“Huh?”

Then a car sped past, slowing just enough for someone to yell, “Nice ride, faggot!”

The rear of the scooter unfolded for the robot to peek its head out and spit out its cigarette. “Look, I take-a you home, then I tella you what I can, okay?”

  
  


  



	3. Unwelcome Guest

Chapter  
3: Unwelcome Guest

Barely more than a minute later the scooter turned up the dirt track leading to Terry's old streamliner. He'd positioned his trailer in a little plot on the shoulder of a stony hill, a place with no neighbors in sight, then sold his jeep for his new bike. The trailer was caked in dust, the tires long-since emptied. Cemented stacks of rocks served in place of jacks to level it. He'd added a lean-to shed for his bike and tools; bits of his bike's engine were still scattered outside the shed like shrapnel.

The scooter deposited him at his front door, and Terry took a few hesitant steps, wobbling. “That... that was sumthin' more'n forty.”

The transformer shifted and reached out to steady him. “Si.”

“What happened to th' whining, broke-down engine?”

It shrugged. “It's alla parta ze dizguise, si? Alzo, I hada to, how you say, eff witch you.”

“Wha?”

“You call-a me 'Eurotrash toy shitbox.' Not gonna make-a ze zippy-quick for you den, no?”

Terry opened his door. “Whatever. Look, thanks for the ride, now get out of my life. Don't know what you're doing, don't care, and sure as hell don't want no part in it. Go away.”

“I canna do dat, meatball.” It reached for him.

Terry flinched away. “Do it anyway. Stay away from me.”

“Look,” its eyebrow-segments drooped. “Sorry, okay. Sorry I hurta you. I justa scared, you see. I musta succeed and... a... well...”

“Spit it out. I gotta work in the morning.”

“Look meatball, I need-a you help.”

Terry scowled at the pitiful robot, blew a long breath out through his nose. “Yeah, well you make a lousy first impression. You come inside, and you talk. I'll listen, then I'll kick your ass out anyway. And call me a meatball again and I'll gut you for spare parts. My name it Terry.”

“Si. Terry human, you calla me Pavi.”

Terry paused. “ _Pavi?_ That's a human name. Not like Optimus Prime or Ratchet or Bumblebee.”

“Si, si! Big guys, they give-a me a name, but I-a no like it.”

“What was that?”

Pavi's face fell. “They try calla me Sputter. I tella them _succhi mi cannolini_! Give-a myself a good name.”

“ Hmph. Can't blame you there.” Terry led them inside.

“Big guys, dey always thinka to pusha Pavi, justa cuz I small. Evena Arcee Twins, and they not so much bigger. But Pavi will-- Mama mia! _Primo domi_!” The bot looked around, clearly shocked. Though grubby on the outside, Terry's place was tidy and clean, the original furnishings augmented with sleek bits of compact Ikea genius, a few bits of motorcycle memorabilia tastefully displayed, shelves of political and scientific non-fiction and biker mags, faux-hardwood flooring and a collection of hand-woven rugs. It was like a showroom model, but healthily lived-in.

Terry snorted. “You were expecting beer cans and pizza boxes piled high? A chore-wheel for me and the roaches? I did that for a few years. Didn't like it.” He pulled a masonry jar of homebrew from the fridge, popped the flip-lid, and took a long drink. He sighed, “Jesus that's good. I'm good. Allright, so spill it.” He sat on a barstool. “And make it fast. I got better things to think about than you.” _Like keeping my job and peeling that vest off Angelina with my teeth._ “What do you need from me, and why should I give a crap?”

The man-sized transformer looked around, obviously uncomfortable, and made to sit on Terry's couch. Terry made a noise in his throat. The robot reconsidered. “Okay, okay. You see, long-a time ago, before-a transiformer civil war, great thinker, Zortronicron, sought a way to unalock transiformer potential. He dinna likea ze heirarchy, ze way Primas rule over lesser transiformers by limiting ze individual potential. He wanna hack ze energon limitations, allow individual transiformers reacha past they limits. He wanna equality, no more Primas. He figure it out, too. He make him prototype component, like-a new organ. He means for it to be given to alla Cybertronians, you see?”

Terry went cold, froze with the masonry jar at his lips.

Pavi went on. “But then, ze 'Ceptic _succhiacazzis_ start-a ze war.”

Terry shook his head, feeling infinitely tired. “Am I on Punk'd?” he muttered. He knew the end of this story.

“ Si! 'Ceptics, fotti li mortacci tua! So you see, Zortronicon, he sees zis Quantum Resonance Tuner can be use as ze weapon. _Primo-ultimé_ weapon! So he sends it away. Hides it, to keep it-a safe. Well...”

Terry couldn't hold back anymore. “Oh God _damn it!_ ”

Pavi flinched back from the force of his outburst. “What? Whatta I say, huh?”

Terry stood up, blood going from cold to hot in a blink. He couldn't stand still for this crap, had to pace. He downed the beer, had to just to cool off enough to talk. “Tell me something Pavi. Does our planet have a freakin' _sign_ on it that says 'intergalactic lockbox?'”

“Eh?”

“No, go ahead. No, don't. Lemme guess; the guys digging the last vault at Yucca Mountain found something, and you think it's this thingie, right?”

“Quantum Resonance Tuner. Mebbe when ze Allspark fled Cybertron, ze sympatetic energia drew it--””

“ _Sweet Jesus!”_ Terry threw his hands in the air. “Tell me something. Is there a _single_ all-powerful ancient cultural artifact that you people _haven't_ lost on my god damn world?”

“Eh, who you mean-a _you people_?”

Terry jabbed his finger at the Golden “P” on Pavi's chest. “Robot fricken' aliens. Government's tried to be cadgey on what's been goin' on, but when cities all over the world are getting wrecked, ancient ruins are battlegrounds, planets appear and vanish above ours, and armadas invade, well, _people talk!_ And every time there's some kinda big flare-up, it's always some kinda race to recover some ancient doohickey your whack-ass forefathers freakin' _misplaced_ on our planet! Why can't you leave your toys in someone else's yard?”

“Uh-I-I... Ze sympatetic ener...” The robot would have spluttered, had it been biologically equipped to do so.

Terry slumped down on his couch, dropped his forehead in his hands. “I feel sick. You people piss me off.”

Terry felt the robot's hand hover near his shoulder, then pull back. “Terry, please, I need-a you help.”

“Let me guess. You wanna get inside, see if this thing's for real. You're a scooter, so you planted yourself under my ass, while I was at the Happy Burro, and good job mimicking Mack's loaner.”

“Grazi. But--”

“You're thinking that, scooter-trash to scooter-trash, we'd hit it off, and you'd just schmooze your way into _my_ Yucca Mountain.”

The robot nodded. “Si, si, but see you--”

Terry stood up. “Well tough break! The place's mined with detectors. Ain't you or no other transformer gonna get anywhere _near_ that facility. And there's no _way_ I'll snoop for you. I'm not gonna risk my job compromising the security of--”

“I already beena inside.”

Terry ranted on, “This job's all I got, and I'm damn proud of the service I provide to-- whuh?”

“I've-a been inside, Terry. Ze Quantum Resonance Tuner eeza zere. I needa you helpa getting it out.”

“I-- impossible. How... when? The detec...”

“Ita was atta Mack's, when I-a 'planted meself unda you ass.' I hide his loana behinda de dumpster.”

Terry's head was spinning. He needed another drink, or one less in his system. He couldn't tell which. “But how did you know that I would... IT WAS YOU!” He roared, rushed Pavi, knocked him back with his hands around the little robot's neck. “YOU GUTTED MY BIKE YOU LITTLE PUKE! I'LL--!”

They scuffled, Terry trying to hurt the robot, the robot letting him try. Terry stopped just short of breaking his own knuckles and, panting, looked around for a weapon. Pavi _tsked_ and shoved him back down onto the couch. “Looka Terry, Mack fixa you bike, no problem. Iz not so broke as dat. I just needa you to be my cover, to getta me to Employee parking. I can do it fromma there. Zen I go, wham-bam-grazi-man!”

“Why?”

Pavi blinked, in his way. “Er, iz very powerful component. Hard to explain cuz, you know, iz quantum and all, but uh--”

“No, jack-ass. Why'd you wreck my bike? Why not just hide it, and take it's shape?”

“Oh, cannot man. You bike, eez too _enormé_! I have to adda components, totally reconfigure. No time. Me power core, eez to small for me to be zo _grandé_. Transiformers, we as beeg as ze powercores we eez born with, no more, see? Already was I a scooter, zo Mack's loaner eez piece of pie, leetle cozmetics, leetle rust spots, minor re-shaping, badabing-badaboom! Zen I just act ze _splutter-splutter-putt-BANG_ for you!”

“So... you tore the engine out of my bike, and now you want me to help you break into a secure facility. A place, by the way, which is specifically secured _against_ transformers. You're talking about maximum-security federal prison for me.” He shook his head, rose, carried his empty beer jar to the sink.

Pavi followed him. “Terry, please. Zees Quantum Resonance Tuner... eet must be protected. Ze 'Ceptics, if zey get zees, zey get everyzing.”

Terry bent down to reach into the cabinet under his sink.

“You canna understand,” whined the robot, “ze power of zees device. If ze 'Ceptics-a gett eet, zen--”

Terry whirled, standing up quick, and shoved the barrel of a magnum pistol into a gap in Pavi's chest-plates, right under the line of ornamentation that suspiciously resembled links of a thick, gaudy gold chain, which led to the gilt “P” medallion on his chest.

“Erp?” Pavi's eyes widened

“Think I was born yesterday?” Terry growled in Pavi's face.

'Terry, my friend, what-a you--”

“Get out, and never come back, _'Ceptic_. Or we'll find out just how much damage a shitbox scooter can take.”

“ 'C-ceptic? Terry, Pavi's Autobot! I just-a want--”

“I ain't stupid. Autobots _work_ with us. They don't sneak around, breaking in, stealing. Go tell your boss you pigs will have to do better than this. And have fun telling him how you tipped your hand and botched this job.” He cocked the hammer. “Leave, or I pull the trigger. You creeps ain't immortal!” He pushed forward, backing the transformer toward the door. The transformer stepped back, hands held up.

_Please_ , thought Terry, _don't let him see my hands shaking._

Pavi left, packed himself up into scooter-shape and sped of, engine spluttering and whining into the distance. Terry shut the door, threw the bolts, then leaned back against it. He stared down at the gun in his shaking hands, barely even believing what had just happened. He'd just stared down a Decepticon in his own home! He'd almost forgotten his dad's old gun. He hadn't fired the thing in years. He didn't even know for sure if it was loaded.

_But it worked! I just faced a Decepticon, and won!_

“ Phone...” He said. “Where's my phone?” He had to call... who?

Everyone. Jones, the Army, NEST, Beatty Police, nightwatch at Yucca Mountain, get someone on the tail of that little scrap-heap... _Angelina!_ He had to call her, make sure she was off the roads! He fumbled the gun, scrambling to get at his phone with fingers that were still twitchy from adrenaline.

+++++

Pavi screeched to a stop and dropped the act of imitating a broken-down, unmuffled engine. “Leetle meatball jack-ass, thinka he can geddaway with dat, huh?” He whipped around and shot back up the road, quiet as a church whisper.

+++++

Terry fumbled his phone, punching in wrong numbers with shaking fingers, trying to get his brains and his fingers onto the same team. A starburst of spikes stabbed through the door with a sickening _creaakk!_ right by his ear. He barely had time to squawk before the door ripped clean off its hinges. Pavi grabbed him by his shoulder and threw him out into his dust-and-gravel yard. The 'Ceptic looked different now, the segments of his armor sealed up, some kind of mask over his face. Only his evil red eyes glowed through the armored faceplate.

Terry hit the dirt, screaming, slid, scrabbled to get his feet under him as the 'Ceptic stalked toward him. He couldn't get up because he had the gun in his hand--

_The gun!_

He didn't hesitate this time. The bot had murder on its mind, that was plain. Terry raised the gun and fired, point-blank, arms steady, the bellow of the weapon echoing off of the hills.

_POW! POW!_

_-pling! -pling!_

The robot lurched with each shot, but came on, leaned down and ripped the gun from Terry's hands. It turned the weapon around, pointed the barrel at him, put its finger on the trigger.

Terry shut his eyes, screamed when he heard the gun roar... then stopped screaming when he realized he wasn't dead. He cracked one eye open.

Pavi had the gun pointed at his own temple. While Terry watched, the transformer emptied the clip. Its head lurched with each shot, but was otherwise unhurt. The robot snorted at the weapon, then threw it away. It picked Terry up by the front of his shirt and held one hand in front of his face. Whirring saw-blades popped out of Pavi's forearm, spinning millimeters from Terry's nose. Terry whimpered. The robot twisted, lashed out its arm, and the blades shot out like a pair of shiruken, curving at the end of an almost invisible, glinting wire. In one hit the robot demolished his toolshed. The blades returned, clicked away. Pavi's hand split open, producing a barrel. Components spun around the bore. Energy crackled. He aimed at the hillside and shot out a lance of pure-white energy. He burned a jagged line in the slope.

“ You wanna tella _Pavi_ he a D _ecepticon?_ You tella _me_ how ze Autobots work?”

Pavi threw him to the ground, planted a wheel-foot on his chest and pinned him there. His mask popped open. “Look! I showa you how I work, eh!” Lights flickerred in the air in front of Terry's eyes, coalescing into images. “Look!”

Terry did.

_He saw the clean-bored curved walls of one of the vaults deep inside Yucca Mountain. There was a bend in the tunnel, which had been widened. The boring machine had been backed into the area, and sat silent. The floor was still scattered with rubble. Lights hung by their cords from random points; not the permanent fixtures, but the utility lights workmen installed as they went. So, this was the last vault. Terry had heard that the borer had broken down or something, and work had been halted._

_The image darted forward, bobbing side-to-side, skirting the sporadic pools of light and diving into the shadow of the colossal borer._

_This was a recording from Pavi's own eyes._

_The robot crept around the far flank of the machine, wedging himself in the narrow space between the hulk and the tunnel wall, staying well out of view. The machine was parked out of the way, still facing into the half-finished final tunnel. The image crawled forward as the robot squeezed along the length of the machine, hidden in its deep shadows. At the front-end of the machine, the view swept left, over the complex toothy multi-rotating bit of the machine._

“ Sweet Jesus!” hissed Terry. That thing could eat its way through the hardest stone, had already chewed miles into Yucca Mountain without any trouble. The bits were of the hardest alloy impregnated with the highest-quality industrial diamonds. Terry had seen the thing in action once; it had been like a force of nature, a moving nightmare.

_Had been._ Now the bits were gnarled and twisted, some teeth shorn clean off.

_The view retreated – Pavi creeping back behind the borer. He looked down the tunnel; there was a light there, steady and white, tinged with blue, brighter than the worklamps. The image zoomed in, soaring to the end of the tunnel with perfect clarity. There were people at the ragged end of the tunnel, working under the glare of bright lamps. Several clustered at the wall, hammering at chisels, chipping away at something bright. Terry recognized Mr. Braithwait and his passenger, overseeing the work._

_The workers moved back, offering a brief glance of the source of blue light. It was a box, embedded in the wall at an off-kilter angle. It was crystalline, about the size of a basketball, radiant. There was something inside, a dark shadow, obscured by the glare, vaguely hourglass-shaped. It wriggled, slowly, shifting, like a flower that kept blooming out of itself._

_The image zoomed out, then shook. Pavi, shaking his head. Then he backed away, skulked back behind the borer, crawled into the ventilation and slipped away._

The video ended, winked out, leaving Terry staring up at the wide spangled sky, and Pavi's glowing eyes.

“ I shoulda killa you now, meatball, you calla me Decepticon. But I don't, cuz I _notta_ _D_ ecepticon.” The robot's voice had dropped a few octaves, rumbling Terry's ears and triggering some instinctive need to flee. But the thing still had him pinned. Pavi showed him his hands. They sprouted their weapons. “You see Pavi eez powerful?”

Terry nodded. “Yes,” he croaked.

“I saw what I wanted. Only meatballs in my way. What woulda 'Ceptic do then, eh?” His blade whirred. “I coulda killa dem all, piece of pie, sneak out, wait inna you parking lot. Coulda taken itta tonight, no problem. Why don't I, huh?”

Terry gulped. The transformer moved his foot, offered his hand. “I could kill-a you now, wire up you corpse, use-a you like-a de puppet to get in. But I ask nice instead, eh? Why don't I splita you open like-a ze clam?”

Terry let out a long breath, reached up, hesitated, then took Pavi's hand. The robot pulled him up. “Because Autobots don't kill.”

“Si.” Pavi pulled him up. “'Ceptics take-a ze easy way widda foreign relations. Soma-time I tink Optimus Prime, he gotta risotto for circuits, pandering to you fleshglobs... but his way, _our_ way, keeps de souls clean.” The robot kissed its gold medallion, eyes toward heaven, then walked toward the trailer.

“Uh...” Terry rubbed his shoulder, sore from Pavi's little demonstration. He followed. “Wait. You guys have souls?”

Pavi scowled at him. “Define 'soul.'”

“Err...”

The robot shook its head. “ _Mama mia_ , you canna say what it is, but you know damn-sure only meatballs get one, eh?”

“I- er- eh... Hell...” Terry climbed the steps, through the ruins of his door. It had been too long a night. He didn't even want to know what time it was. “I'm beat. I gotta sleep.”

“So, you help-a me tomorrow?”

He made a no-committal grunt, then shut himself in his room. He thought he was convinced, but part of him still wondered, worried and scared that the psychotic robot in his house actually _was_ evil. There was too much evidence to process. Maybe Pavi was safe...ish. Maybe not. Terry stood in front of his bed, head whirling with the possible layers of deception. Maybe Pavi was a Latrine... er, 'Ceptic. Maybe he still needed Terry, had his own reasons why he couldn't just grab the whatsit and run... or maybe he was genuine, but where were the other Autobots and NEST? Why was Pavi sneaking around under DARPA's nose?

Shell games in shell games, all of his imagining. He wasn't cut out for this spy-game crap. “Screw it,” he muttered. He flopped down, tried to focus on Angelina... Angelina Cooke, with her Valkyrie body and brain-numbing smile... those eyes that reeled him in... warm fingers on his arms... lush lips brushing the back of his hand... Yeah. If he were gonna get murdered in his sleep by some 'Ceptic plot, at least he'd have something good on his mind.

  
  


  



	4. Probing Yucca Mountain

Chapter  
4: Probing Yucca Mountain

The pilot's hands were not sweating. He thought this was odd. All through training, the sims and flight tests, even his few simple patrol flights, he'd had palms slick with nervous sweat. It had never affected his performance ratings. No one had ever known, but the sweaty palms had always dogged him, a little artifact of doubt over whether he really belonged in a jet fighter. But since the alarms had tripped tonight, scrambling him out of his bunk and into the saddle of his aging F-35, something cold and in-control had come over him.

He'd always thought re-opening Yucca Mountain was a bad idea. It wasn't just about cost anymore; storing nuclear waste was now a matter of national security, and Yucca Mountain seemed to fall under the category of “all the eggs in one basket.” Then again, the basket was in a mountain, surrounded by hundreds of miles of harsh, open, empty terrain. And it was snuggled up to the belly of one of the most, erm... _interesting_ collections of military installations in the nation.

And what the hell? Re-opening had meant an increased budget to support more airtime for men and drones. More airtime for _him_ , which was all any pilot ever dreamed of. Desert skies were the best, a big blue so wide you could get lost in it.

Night flights were different, with stars above and only the scattered lights of sparse civilization below. He leaped into the air, wingman following to his left, and banked off toward the coordinates the controllers fed him. This was not a drill. His hands were steady and, for the first time, dry.

“Energon sensors tripped in section 8.” said Control.

“Visuals yet?” the pilot asked, stoking the engines hotter.

“Negative. High-eyes are following. Minimal thermal or radiant emissions, but the bogey is energon-hot, at least a level two. Moving at high speed southbound at ground-level, following the highway.”

The pilot grunted. It was ground-bound now, but that didn't mean much with transformers. “Any contact?”

“Stalkers engaged, but no confirmed hits. It was too fast for them to pursue.”

“Won't be a problem for me.” With that he and his wingman joined the hunt. They roared across the sky, big hunting eagles with a vanguard of falcons and hawks; aerial drones. In minutes they were over the valley, following the highway right up the bogey's tail.

The drones fed them information, sharpening their picture of the contact. He was slippery, like the controller said: silent, unlit, cold, barely a ghost on radar. A blazing beacon on the energon sweep, though. The glowing blob on the display didn't give the pilot much of an idea what he was working against, though. It was long, low, asymmetrical, with a bulge on the right. It moved like something with wheels, but it was _fast_ _,_ and blazing right in toward Yucca Mountain.

No problem, though. The pilot synched the detection system with his fire control, armed a missile, and rested his finger over the firing stud. “I have a firing solution. Do I engage?”

“Negative. Hold the lock.” That was his commander, always a bit conservative about deploying major weaponry over home turf, and cautious with his living soldiers. “Reaper will take the first shot.”

The pilot understood; you never knew what a transformer could do. It was best to open with a UAV to test the bogey out. But it was a hard order to follow; the pilot smelled blood, and his trigger finger itched.

The reaper hopped over the ridge and into the valley, flying in that exact, textbook way drones had. It angled in, almost head-on with the bogey, and loosed a pair of missiles.

The bogey reacted, swatting the birds from the air with chattering anti-ballistics, then spearing the drone with some sort of energy weapon. The reaper was vaporized.

“Engaging.” The pilot didn't need permission now; the fight was joined and the decisions were his. He and his wingman fired, four birds away.

The bogey let out an EM-burst, a wave that scrambled their electronics and fried the missiles' sad little brains. The birds exploded against the roadway and the slope of the valley, missing the bogey, but casting a brief bit of light.

For a second, the pilot saw the bogey, and it looked damn mean.

The EM burst was an old trick, almost expected when dealing with 'Ceptics. Fire control would be out for a bit, but the flight systems of his Lightning were shielded enough. He called to his wingman, “Get your claws out.”

They moved in, gatling cannons opening up over their shoulders. Tricks could stop smart missles, but nothing could block dumb hot heavy metal slugs. Bursts of spent uranium stitched lines across the valley floor, ruining the roadway, crossing the bogey's path as the two pilots sought to tear it apart.

They connected, sparks and fire flying from the flanks and fenders of the bogey. In the brief glow, the pilot saw it shift, cracking open and reshaping itself. Part of it flew off and in the next moment his wingman screamed. The pilot glanced over, watched something _t_ _ear his wingman's cockpit open_. The scream cut off abruptly.

“ Mother f--!” The pilot cut himself off and locked his eyes forward. He kept his breathing in line, in and out through clenched teeth, though he wanted to panic. He kept control, didn't watch his wingman's jet tumble from the sky. Where was the bogey? Less than a second of distraction, and he'd lost it. Some of his scrambled systems rebooted, re-connecting him with the drones and HQ.

“\--appening out there? Report.”

The pilot gasped, locked his teeth and said, “Scramble more. This one's--”

Silver wings flashed by, right in front of him. His plane shuddered. Metal screeched, bent and tore. The pilot looked back over his shoulder as he lost control of his jet, and saw one of his own wings flipping away in the wind.

  
  


  



	5. Breakfast

Chapter  
5: Breakfast

Terry dreamed. It started out, as morning dreams do, rather disturbing. Angelina was there, and her clothes fell open... but no, it was her skin, splitting apart, all circuits and servos, and she collapsed into the shape of a scooter, her laughing face where the headlight went, and she ran over his toes, breaking them.

_No!_ shouted a little part of his conscious mind. _Angelina! Dream of her the_ _right_ _way!_

_The right way, the right way, hot chick on a hot bike..._ Pavi, draping himself over the saddle of a slick, shiny custom chopper, robo-fingers beckoning, _come-hither_ , saw-blades snapping out--

\--Dream shudder--

He was on the race track again, the championship run, the one he'd blown. He felt the same confidence and lightness, relived the glorious anticipation, though it was tinged with black, with knowing of what was to come. 

And the light shone green, and he was off, roaring, the quarter-mile stretching in time to minutes, hours, all senses open. He had wings. This time would be different! This time he'd--

He looked down, and it was Pavi. He was barreling down a drag strip on Pavi, the rusted old scooter, engine all a-splutter, smoke pouring out of the seams.

_Sonofa!_

The wiring in his head, pre-programmed from ancient days, sparked. He panicked. He jerked right. Always right. He'd hever escape that choice. He careened into the back of Perotti's dragster... but this time the man was leaning back, turned in his saddle, mask open, and laughing at him. Terry and his little scooter bounced right off, and Perotti laughed and laughed as Terry tumbled in a cloud of metal and fire...

_Nah, eff that..._

He woke up a little, conscious mind exerting control over his dream, steering it back to where he wanted it.

_Angelina_ _..._ Smaller vest... no, not a vest, but a leather bikini... jeans cut off... same boots though. Camped out under the stars, next to the embers of a campfire, night growing chilly, but they made their own heat. Salty skin of her neck... Mr Braithwait-- _NO!_ No. No, Angelina... Definitely a bikini top, the kind that ties in the back, the kind he can untie, one-handed, just by pulling this string here...

What sounded like all of his pots clattered on the kitchen floor.

“Uhrnnn...!” Terry rolled over, burying his ears in his pillow.

_Let's see... what string?_ This one here. Little top so taut it's ready to pop right off. Just give it a little--

The alarm-clock went off.

“ Ern! What? Hell!”

There was more clattering in the kitchen.

“Just who in the hell?” Terry fought his way into a t-shirt and boxers, pulling the elastic over the obstruction, grabbed his bat and yanked open the flimsy folding door. “Who the hell is in my--”

Pavi backed out of a cabinet and stood abruptly, scattering cookware across the floor. “Bongiorno Terry! Eh--” the robot pointed. “Whoi salami shorts! Izza you threatening me widda dat ting?”

Terry grunted, sighed, and lowered his bat. “Aw hell, you're real?” He kicked his way across a battleground of pots, plates and sundries. “Autobot, huh? Then I know you're gonna do the right thing and clean this crap up.”

“Si, si, scuzzi, I just needa finda de fuel.”

“Whatever.” Terry popped open a ceramic cactus on his counter, spooned coffee beans into his grinder, and set his coffee pot to gurgling. He was a sensible man, and knew there was no point to freaking out until he had his first cup. Pavi watched him the whole time, eyes blazing bright.

Terry paused in mid-shuffle across the kitchen and scowled. “Fuel?” he asked. “Thought you bots ran on energon.” He sat at his table – sensibility again; no use standing until coffee was ready.

Pavi scampered over to the counter and pressed the little button which made the cactus pop open. He squeaked, sniffed, then giggled. “ _Che bello! Caffé caffé caffé!_ ”

Terry scratched his bum thoughtfully. “Come to think of it, how'd you not get shot out from under me? Yucca Mountain's packed with energon detectors.”

“Oh, si! Pavi is new generation, born here.” He filled the coffee grinder. “Pavi experimental!” He said with pride. “I havva non-energon powerplant!” The grinder whirred.

“So, what, you drink coffee?”

Pavi cocked his head. “Drink?” He opened the grinder and vacuumed up the contents into his gob. A cascade of internal whirrings and thunks followed. His eyes shone a more vibrant shade, and some of his internal workings accelerated their tickings, clicks and spins. “ _Come se squisito!_ Biochemical conversion plant. Converta ze certain biomass into ehhh... eh-Zoom ZOOM!”

“No joke...?” Terry stroked his chin. The coffee pot spluttered its grand finale. “Siddown, Pavi. Take a load off.”

The robot blinked. “Si?”

“ Yeah, go ahead, enjoy that buzz as it settles in. I wanna show you something.” After some digging, Terry found two unbroken mugs, filled both with his signature strong brew. He liked to call it 88-Magnum Coffee, as in “It shoots through schools.” He doctored both mugs with plenty of sugar and just a drop of cream. It took the edge off, the way the promise of a dollar took the edge off of your dad yanking a not-really- _that_ -loose tooth out of your head.

“Try it. Sip it. Hell, give it a long pull.”

Pavi wasn't built for “sipping,” but he managed with his vacuum trick, leaning over the steaming cup. It was like a little waterspout of steaming coffee twirling up from the mug and into... wherever he put it.

The robot sat back, considering, letting the brew slosh its way through him. There was no room for exclamations here. He just whispered, “ _Squisito_ _..._ ”

Terry took a gulg, then leaned forward. “Okay, you want my help, I need information. What is a Quanta-whotsis?”

“Ze Quantum Resonance Tuner. Eez, ehh... hard to explain.”

“Try me.”

“Eez long story.”

“Make it short. You got ten minutes to convince me I should help your sorry ass. So tell me what I'm getting in to.”

“Eez nadda-nuff to prove I ze Autobot?”

“No.” Terry slurped. “Now out with it.”

“Er...” Pavi slurped again, and seemed to catch a fresh wind. “Oh, si, si! Look, all transiformers, we can reshape ourselves in small ways.” He lifted his arm, moved a few components, recolored his chassis segments in a psychadelic fractal pattern. “See, easy. Nanotech, eez deez leetle robotto dat--”

“We have nanotech.”

“Oh, si. Well, leetle changes eez easy. But major recofigures, incorporating and rebuilding new components, eez much harder. Take-a time é energia. And no transiformer can be more _enormé_ zan he power system limits.”

“Why not make your power system bigger?”

“Eez impossible. Mine eez more inefficient ze bigger it gets. Eef I wants to be as big as, say, Optima Prima, zen my whole _trailer_ would have to be power generators, an I hafta eat twice-a my weight each meal. So datza no good.

“But _energon_ systems, what alla other transiformers have, datta-notha story. Dey use-a high-order quantum mechanics. Incomprehensible to all but ze Primas ze Primas. Rest of us, we canna touch it. So transiformers are limited. We nothing more than ze limits set at creation, set by a Prima.”

“Oh. Good. So what?”

“Ze Quantum Resonance Tuner, if eet works, allows ze individual transiformer to access ze theoretical substrate of local reality, recode matter and energy to other forms,including raw energon, and draw realities from other parallel streams of probability into this one. He can add to himself, reshape local existence, massively reconfigure even hees own power-core. Make-a hemself suprimo-powerful.”

“Er... what?”

“He can be as big as he wants, any shape he wants, anyting he wants. Leetle Pavi could make himself a Primo... And zen beeger still. Ze _ultimé_ transiformer.”

“How?”

Pavi shrugged. “Quantum.”

Terry downed his Magnum-88. “Okay, whatever... sounds like it'd be better-off locked up with DARPA.”

“No, no, eez nodda safe. Nadda for 'Ceptics, nadda for humans. Ze Quantum Resonance Tuner must be guarded, hidden, never tested... not when there izza war.”

Terry shrugged. “Great. Have Optimus Prime and NEST Go through the right channels to take care of this. Why all the sneaking?”

Pavi shook his head. “DARPA donna play nice no more. They tired of us 'withholding assets in a time of war.' They won' let thizza one go.”

“Well, so what? Let us protect it. It'll stay locked away in Yucca Mountain, safe and sound.”

“Oh, yeah, check you track record on dat one, meatball.”

“Watch it Splutter! _You_ _need_ _me_ , remember? So don't go mocking my species. We'll keep your precious artifact locked up tight, and no 'Ceptic will--”

“No. QRT is _not_ safe with you. You mammals will pick it apart until you find ze beeg red button, and you gonna _push_ it! You know zees!”

“Yeah? And then what?”

Again, Pavi shrugged “Who knows? Zees artifact can maybe fundamentally restructure quantum substrate of existence. Maybe noting happen without transiformer intelligenté to guide it. Maybe just not work at all. Or maybe if make trans-dimensional wormhole inna you planet, suck whole solar system into perpetually self-annihilating fractallized death spiral. Eez never fully tested.”

“Oh....”

“Think it theez way; woulda you personally hand nuclear bomb for safe-keepings to ze guy you voted fo?”

Terry sneered. “Yeah... no way.”

“Look, Terry, ze QRT musta be kepta safe from everyone, fromma human and ze Decepticons. So--”

“I'll help you.” He cut off the robot's excclaimations with a raised finger. “For a price.”

The robot knit its upper-optical articulated shade segments. “A price? What price? Capitalist! I havva no _scarole_. Whadda you want, eh?”

“ Not money. I'll get you to the parking lot, but from there you're on your own. Get in, gather the thingy, and sneak back to the lot before my shift's up. You get caught, I never heard of you. Got it?”

Pavi ruminated, then nodded. “Si, this is all I want. And you?”

“Schematics for your biomass powerplant, and all the information I need to build a working prototype with human technology.”

Pavi grimaced. “But... er, zees is against Primo's directive. I canna--”

“I'm not asking for a weapon, just a renewable power source. And it's that, or you find your own way into Yucca Mountain.”

+++++

There was never much traffic on the old highway Terry used to get to work. That was why he used it. Therefore no one had the opportunity to wonder how a little Vespa sustained 80mph without even slowing for the curves.

White-knuckled, Terry leaned as low as he could behind the little joke of a windshield and tried to stay on. Scooters weren't designed to hold people on at these speeds. He had his feet wedged behind the front fender and his butt braced against the (still) locked cargo box, praying not to fall off.

Pavi giggled beneath him. “ _Mamma Mia!_ ” he shrilled. “Terry! You Magnum-88, eez rocket fuel! Zoom Zoom!”

“Pavi?” shouted Terry.

“Si?”

“If this mission's such a big deal, and no offense... but why did they send only you?”

“No one send Pavi. Big guys, zey all busy in Buenos Ares. I was alone, holding zee fort, sort of. Pavi not suppose to leave NEST HQ yet. But, zees all happen, I have to act.”

“So you're all alone in this?”

“Nonsense! I havva you!”

  
  


  



	6. Infiltration

Chapter 6: Infiltration

Terry knew something was up the second he saw the employee gate. There were stalker drones flanking the fence, and borrowed MPs standing with Maureen at the checkpoint. Terry handed over his badge and chatted with Maureen, doing his best not to tremble, flip out, jump off the scooter and blow Pavi's cover.

“Hey Mo, what's with the welcoming committee?” The stalker to his right, a chicken-legged mech with an ovoid body and clusters of sensors and weaponry at its snout, turned and gave him the once-over. Somewhere over on Nellis AFB, some soldier in a video game chair was checking him out. He blew the cameras a kiss, trying to cover how close he was to crapping his pants.

Maureen _tsked_ , swiped his badge, and – and this was new – swept a energon wand over him and Pavi. The idling mock-engine noise whined just the slightest bit higher, but otherwise the transformer kept his cool. “You didn't hear?” asked Maureen.

“Hear what?”

“You deaf, or did ya just black out last night? Perimeter got tripped. No drill. Class 2 energon source, at least. AF scrambled, went after the thing, tore the Old Valley Highway up chasin' the creep.”

“No joke?” Terry suddenly had a burn spreading wherever he touched Pavi. This was a counter to the ice in his gut. He wanted out. Why had he agreed to anything with Pavi? People _died_ when transformers came around! 

One of the MPs shifted and grunted. “Ahem.”

Maureen shot him a withering look. “What?”

“Well, ma'am, I don't think you should--”

“What? I ain't sharing classified info. I don't _know_ anything, and that's more'n you. I'm just spreading rumors. Ain't no regulation against that!”

“Actually, I could cite--”

“Just stand there and look pretty, soldier, and make ready to bust a cap with that big rig of yours.” The soldiers weren't armed with conventional rifles. Their guns were new, sleek, hooked up to battery-packs on their backs. Railguns with diamond-bit burrowing smart rounds; anti-transformer weaponry, Decepticon killers. Terry had seen an ATF-Rail demonstrated on YouTube; the Professional Russian came out of retirement to take apart a backhoe with one.

He realized Maureen had resumed talking to him. “...valley's closed, highway and all. People are spooked. They chased it off, but I think someone got killed.”

“Oh...” Terry gulped, mind blanking when he knew he needed to say _something_.

The MP waved him on with the barrel of his railgun. “C'mon, man, get to your spot. We need all you guys on high alert, _kapish_?” He muttered to his comrade, “Dunno why the Pentagon ever let running this place fall to the DOE...”

Numb, Terry spluttered in, wedging Pavi into a spot in the employee lot between Bob's jeep and a wall, where cameras and people might not notice him. He sat on the saddle, panting, feeling very far away from himself. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he whispered. How could he ever have been so stupid? Who did he think he was? What in the world was he thinking, that he should take part in stealing from _DARPA_ _?_ From the Feds? From his _work_ _?_ What ever made him think that he could get away with it?

“Hey-a Terry?”

He just about jumped out of his skin. “Shit! Hell! What?”

“Come on, getta-you off. We gotta jobsa ta do, eh?”

“N-no, no way man! This I-- Didn't you hear that?”

“Si, si! Eez 'Ceptics sniffin' round.”

“We gotta call it off. This is getting way too hot. I can't believe that I--”

“Hey! Whatsa matta fo you? We callin' offa nothing. Eez now primo primo _importante_. Zee quantum—erp!”

Terry wrenched the throttle to get the bot's attention, shutting him up just before Bob rounded the corner of the building.

“ Mornin' Terry.”

“Eh... mornin' Bob.”

Bob looked Pavi over, chuckling softly. “You gonna sit on that laugh-wagon all morning, or what?”

“Erm, yeah, I'll be right there.”

“You all right man? I thought I heard--”

Terry thumped the side of his helmet. “Podcast. Just finishing up a podcast. K?”

“Oh. Easy. I'll let you be.” Bob ducked into his truck, fished out his book. “Forget my own head if it wasn't stuck on.” He waved with the book, then went off.

“Okay,” said Terry, “I gotta get to work. You do whatever you do. But if you get caught, I don't know you. I'll open fire with the rest of them. I gotta. At least I know it won't hurt you.”

“It could hurt me.” Pavi was silent for a long moment, then finally said, “Si. Donna worry youself, Terry. I do this ze Autobot way, or I nadda do it at all. Ze monster's outta there, notta right here. I take it easy, no problem. Fuhgeddaboudit.”

+++++

It was Terry's worst day since his racing career had gone down in flames. MPs with their energon-detector-scoped ATF-rails hovered over his shoulder, scoping his every move, spooking the truckers. Stalkers stumped the long drive, the perimeter, the fence. The roar of fighter jets and drones never ended. At least the hippies had been scared off for a day.

Every time his radio squawked he expected to hear an intruder alert, a call to arms. At any moment he knew he'd have to watch the soldiers tear the annoying robot apart with their smart-rounds, and he wouldn't be able to do or say anything without implicating himself.

On top of it all, Jones was cracking the whip like never before, hounding them to triple-check every move they made. The DARPA goons were skulking around too, fouling up the works. Mr. Braithwait in particular threw his weight around, acting like he ruled the place, commandeering soldiers and YMNWR employees alike to do is bidding. One look at his badge got their tails waggling.

Terry watched him go after haranguing him and Bob. “SCI- _Universal,_ ” he sneered. “Chump.”

Trucks piled up in the drive, drivers growing foul-tempered in the hot sun. Rumors of the night's “incident” had everyone on edge; the soldiers were noticeably twitchy, like dogs who smelled a pack-mate's blood.

Terry ducked out into the employee lot on his lunch break. Pavi was still there, where he'd left him, sitting quiet as a... well, quiet as a parked scooter. For one dizzying moment Terry wondered/hoped that he'd dreamed the whole thing up. He stood staring for a moment, transfixed, wondering if there was some way he could make this all go away. He didn't dare talk to the transformer. Had the robot already completed his mission? Was the quantum thingfibulator already packed away in that cargo crate of his? Terry didn't think so. Braithwait and his DARPA goon squad would have been going gonzo madhouse by now if the thing had vanished.

“Whatcha doin out here?”

“Hoa sweet Jesus!” Terry jumped, spun around, saw Jones calmly lighting a cigarette. Terry reached for the wall, thinking to lean innocently, missed, staggered, recovered, and said. “Erm... smoke break. Hell, you spooked me. Frickin' ninja.”

The grizzled old hound of a man cocked his head. “You don't smoke.”

Terry slumped, playing it up now that he'd had a few seconds to process. “I know. Look, I just needed a place to breathe without some armed chump glowering down my neck.”

Jones cracked a little hint of a smile, took a drag, and spoke through the smoke. “I hear ya. Gettin' crowded in there.” He took another long drag, blew out twin slow streamers through his nose. This was Jones' contemplation pose. After stretching the silence out, he said. “Look, no hard feelings. I'll stop riding your asses so hard just as soon as Braithwait gets his fist out of mine.”

“Hell, Jones, did you have to put it that way?”

He chuckled. “Look, I understand the razzing you gave him yesterday. Guy's a douche. I get better vibes off gutter condoms. But next time, would you just ease off. Best way to handle Official Blowhards like that is to give 'em what they want and send them on their way. 'Specially today; this situation is _dead_ serious. This is the first real test of this crew and this facility. We can't afford to screw up.”

Terry stuck his hands in his pockets, hunched his shoulders and scuffed one foot on the ground. “Aww... shucks Pa. I'll try to be good. Promise.”

“Hmph. Wise-ass.” He took a last drag, ground the butt under a toe, and smirked at Pavi. “Heh. Nice wheels.”

“Shut up. It's just a loaner.”

“Yeah. Mack's kind of a douche too, isn't he?”

Terry shrugged. “Yeah, but he does good work.”

When Jones left, Terry looked over just in time to see Pavi poke a hand out from under his chassis, middle finger rampant.

“ _Figlio di puttana!_ ” the robot hissed.

Terry snarled. “Shh! Put that away, dumbass!”

+++++

The rest of the day ran on with a pins-and-needles monotony. Everyone was on edge, but nothing happened. No alarms, no sirens, no gunfire. Terry said his normal goodbyes at the end of his shift, suffered a few snarky barbs about the scooter and his helmet, hopped on Pavi and rolled out.

The transformer ran silent at first, until Terry rapped on the chassis with his heel and hissed, “Yo! Make some noise!” Pavi launched a chorus of appropriate whines and sputters, raising a chuckle from his coworkers in the lot. Terry twisted the throttle, and shot off with a sickly _pop!_

“ You're pretty good at the sound-effects.”

“ _Grazi!_ ”

They pulled off of the main highway onto the old road which led home. “So, what's the scoop?” asked Terry.

“Eez no good. Alla ze soldiers and ze guards watchina everthin'. Eez no way, I couldna get close.”

“I don't see how you got in yesterday without being seen.”

“I-a skinny, you see. And flexi _al-dente_!”

Terry sighed. Tension washed off his shoulders like a deep-tissue massage. “Well, that's it then.”

“ What? I try again tomorrow. Did some snooping. Pavi has a plan!”

“No dice, bot. Braithwait and the DARPA contingent are heading out tomorrow morning. You can bet your fender skirts they'll be taking the QRT with them.”

Pavi slowed. “Terry, I canna give up. Ze QRT musta be hidden.”

Terry grimaced into the wind. “It's no good, Pavi. Get Optimus to go through proper channels. This is too big for the both of us.”

“But, you donna understand. DARPA... we know theysa gonna mess with it, see whadda make it tick. Eez too dangerous.”

“Then your ancestors should have taken better care of it. I'm sorry, but after today, I'm done.”

“Terry, you right, zees eeza too big. Datsa why we canna just let it--”

Terry twisted the throttle to get the transformer's attention. “There's nothing more too it. Take us home.”

  
  


  



	7. Bromance

Chapter  
7: Bromance

Terry opened two jars of his homebrew, handed one to Pavi, and sat in a folding chair next to the demolished pile of his tool shed. “Here, see what your biomass processor thinks of that.”

Pavi looked the other folding chair over; it was older than Terry, and more roughly-used besides. The robot popped off his cargo-box backpack and sat on that. “Terry, c'mon, lemme try again. I tink I saw a way, I just needed--”

Terry chopped his hand sideways. “Forget it. You're gonna get someone killed.”

“But I--”

“Look, I get it. You're young, small, a prototype oddball. You want the heavies to accept you, and you think this could be your big break. I've been there. But now there's a _Decepticon_ around; we don't know who, but we know he did some major damage last night. You'd be stupid to face him alone. And besides, how happy would Big Prime be if you got yourself or someone else killed trying to _steal_ from the US _Government_?” He took a long pull. “And besides, the QRT is leaving tomorrow morning, before my shift starts. The way things are right now, you can bet your kickstand the goons'll get real curious if we show up hours early for my shift.”

Pavi shook his head, staring into the jar of red ale, glowing amber in the sunset. “Si. Yousa right. I canna do zees.”

Terry patted the sad robot's shoulder-plate. “Tomorrow DARPA will slip out, nice and quiet, and transport the QRT to a new facility. They'll keep it safe. I know the Feds can be a bunch of blowhards, but don't worry. If the thing is _really_ that dangerous, they'll work with the Autobots to keep it safe. Report this to Prime. Let him take care of it. This ain't your time, but it'll come, don't worry.”

The robot sighed.

Terry soft-punched Pavi's shoulder. “Hey, you gonna try that beer, or just stare at it?”

“ Oh, _scuzzi_.” The robot funneled up a good-sized gulp. His eyes flashed at the first taste, then settled into a mellow gold glow as his insides processed the brew. “ _Mamma mia. Deliciosé birra_. You make zees?”

“ Sure did.”

“Ay yai, you good at something, meatball.”

“Eat me, Splutter.” 

“Eh, you'd gum up mi works.”

Terry passed a can of nuts. “Hey. Gotta get all the food groups.”

“ _Grazi_. Here,” Pavi popped open one of his storage compartments and held something out to Terry. “I make-a you zees.”

“ What the...?” Terry took the object. It was his gun, his dad's magnum pistol, but it had been drastically altered. The grip had been split and widened to accept a bigger cartridge, and the barrel had been split down its length, the two semi-cylinders mounted with nearly an inch of clearance between them. Pavi had fitted circuitry and evenly-spaced dark nodules down the old bore. The circuits ran back to an entirely new structure; a pair of elongated, J-shaped components which fit around the back of the gun and along its side like a horseshoe.

“What the hell is this?” The robot had ruined his dad's gun... _but why?_

“ Eez payment you asked for. Leetle railgun.” Pavi pointed to one of the new components. “Itty biomass reactor gives you all the juice you need offa leetle _leche_ , marinara, whatever. Anyzing witta calories. I printa you zee schema later. Wheez zees, you figure it all out.”

Terry stared at the chop-shop gun, wondering. The new components were made of welded metal plates, perfectly joined and polished. Patches of paint remained which looked suspiciously close to the color of Bob's truck. He'd hate to see the chunk Pavi had cut out of the body.

The right-hand component had a screw-on nozzle on top, like a tiny gas-cap. The left component felt heavy, packed full of compact gizmometry. “Thanks... I guess. But, why did you mess with my gun?”

“After I see eez no good to get zee QRT today, I spend time making zees. Eez getting dangerous. 'Ceptics around. I wanna give-a you a chance, in case tings go bad. Look, I make it fit to zees ones.” From another compartment he pulled a thick clip of massive bullets. Their spiralled tips sparkled, and tiny components and wires were packed tightly into each slug. ATF smart rounds.

Terry took the clip gingerly, knowing each round carried as much explosive force as a whole clip of magnum bullets. “You stole this? From a soldier?”

“Si. Piece-a pie. He wasa having a whizzle. Zees tings are good, better zan leetle slugs you shoot. Here, watch.” Pavi snatched the gun and poured half his beer into the reservoir. The gun whined, vibrating slightly, and indicator lights glowed on the side, shifting from red to green. Pavi pointed. “Grean meansa go.” He slapped the cartridge home. “Safety still works. Just givee ze juice, offa de safety, point and click. Badabing badaboom _badabam!_ ”

Pavi handed the gun back. “Simple reactor, not like mine, cares only for caloric content, no mind ze nutrients. Birra eez multi bene!” He thumped his chest proudly. “Pavi's reactor eez more refined, can extract energy from finer bio elements, build materials from nutrients, juz like-a you.”

Terry turned the weapon in his hands. _A beer-powered railgun?_ He itched to try it out, but didn't want to waste the precious rounds; each shot was probably about a month's pay for him. Besides, the thing looked like it might just as soon blow his hand off. “Thanks again. This is...” He faltered. This was Pavi acting directly against Optimus' orders not to provide humans with new weaponry. And the little robot didn't need to; after today, the deal was off as far as Terry was concerned. He held out his jar. “It means a lot to me.”

“ Eeza no problema.” They clinked jars and raised them high.

One jar turned to two, the sun sank lower, and Terry started thinking he should break out some cans of cheap swill, make a session night out of it.

“ _...pizza pie, that's amoré...”_

Terry chuckled. Pavi was sprawled in the dirt, head pillowed on his cargo box. He'd found this pose got him around the laborious fluid-sucking practice. Laying down, he could just pour it in, swallow and sing.

“ Pavi?” Terry scratched his head. “I been thinkin'.”

“Ooh, easy there-a Terry. I don' tink you equippa fo' doin' zees.”

“I been thinkin'... If the QRT was like this great... equalizer, then... then why did Zorcrupftipuff--”

“\--Zortronicon.”

“Yeah. Why'd he hide it at the start of the war? Why not give it to everyone? Maybe there wouldna never been no war. Huh?”

Pavi sat up, eyelights blinking. “You know, meatball, I gotta theory on datta one. You wanna know a secret?”

Terry shrugged. “Sure.”

Pavi looked left, then right, making sure there were no eavesdroppers hiding in the miles of empty desert. “I tink it wassa ze _Primas_ hide it. I tink dey shushha Zortronicon up!”

“Why would they do that?”

Pavi chuckled. “Cuz it take-a they power! Autobot or Decepticon, they still needa Primos to give-a spark to ze hatchlings, create-a energon cores, to make-a new life! Zortronicon's gift would make-a everyone a Prima! So ze Primas bury it!” He gulped, then whispered, “Shhh... zees theory, eez beeg trouble for Pavi, so you keepa quiet.”

“Whoa... damn.” Terry went quiet for a bit. It made a lot of sense, Pavi's theory... at least when squared up with the rest of the mythology around the QRT. A device that gave any transformer the power to create as much energon as he wanted, to expand his own potential... Terry grunted. “I can see why _you_ know so much about the thing.”

Pavi nodded, eyes on the horizon. “Si. Leetle boys like wizards and knights. Pavi also wanna be more zan he can be.”

Terry shook his head. “Don't say that! Look, you're an annoying little ass, but you're still amazing! You're fast, you're efficient, you've got those awesome blades... sometimes you're even funny! Look, I know you; you've got heart, man. _heart_!”

Pavi chuckled. “ _Grazi_. Now, can you getta you hand offa mi _cazzo_ and passa-nudda _birra_?”

“Sure thing, Splutter.” Terry fished a pair of cans out of a cooler and tossed one to Pavi. The robot stood the whole can in his mouth, sliced open the bottom, and let the contents drain in.

While Terry sipped his beer and watched the sky turn pink, Pavi resumed singing.

Two beers later, the robot had reached full volume. “ _Bells will ring, ting-a-ling-a-ling,ting-a-ling-a-ling,and you'll sing THAT'S AMOR--_ Hey!”

Terry kicked him in the shoulder. “Yo! You sing that song one more time, an' I'll make a salad shooter outta you.”

The robot looked hurt. “I no under-a-stand. You drinka ze birra, you sing-a ze songs. Eez human. No?”

“Well, yeah, but...”

“Eez ze only song I know. Musica mi country.”

“Ogh... 'Your country...'” Terry dragged his hand down over his face, way too tired for this. “Why the hell d'you talk like that?”

“Whadda you meana, meatball?”

“It's freakin' ridonculous! Ironhide had that English bulldog grumble, the Wreckers all talked like rejects from _Snatch_ _,_ and don't get me started on the _Twins!_ ...T hen there's freakin' _Dino_ , all 'Ai vato! I cut-chyoo so bad!' And now you're babblin' like some turtle-stompin' plumber! You guys are freakin' _aliens!_ Why do you have _accents?_ ”

Pavi sucked the last drops from the can, then spoke over the whirring of his innards. “Izza thinga we do. Cultural familiarity. Helpa you meatballs understand us, no? Makes us lessa de 'freakin' alien.'” When he quoted Terry, Pavi actually replayed a recording of what he'd just said. “Samma reason Decepticons talka like monsters and demons alla ze time, see? Meatball cybology... er, psychology.”

“You all sound like a bunch of assholes!”

“Look Terry, we live-a here now. If we live-a here,we musta _live_ here. Transiformer crunches troo de web in ten seconds, findsa de niches where heez personality fit, and adapt. We just tryin' to find us ze _home_.”

“ Oh...” Terry scowled. “So _I'm_ the asshole. Well, I'm used to it.”

Pavi sighed, staring off into the West, the sky blazing in pinks and purples, filmy clouds shaded yellow and blue, the first stars winking overhead. The kind of sunset you could almost _hear_ , like a choir. “Eh, eez not so bad a planet to calla home, either. _Mamma mia_ , looka ze sunset.”

“Yeah, it ain't half bad. Just need to keep them 'Ceptics from...” He froze. _Sunset?_ He looked at his watch and jumped up. “Hell!”

“What?”

“I'm late! I have a date er...” He staggered, legs going a bit noodly in the knees. “Er, maybe not a date but... Crap man, I gotta go.”

Pavi stood up. “Forget it, man. Birdsa come ė birdsa go. Sunsets like zees though...”

Terry took a step, wobbled, and caught himself on the back of a chair. “My brew's too strong. Ugh...” He blinked, then managed to convince his feet to stay below him for a bit. “Hey, this _bird's_ a rare breed. Hell... You cool to drive?”

Pavi held his hands up, studied his fingers, waved them a little. “Eh, sure. But you owe-a me.” He stood and tucked himself down into scooter-shape. “All aboard, meatball! And donna fall off!”

Terry donned the checkered helmet and fumbled at the chinstraps. “Whoo... no promises on that, Splutter.”

  
  


  



	8. Sweaty Rendezvous

Chapter  
8: Sweaty Rendezvous

Terry had Pavi drop him off a few blocks away from the bar again. No sense letting Angelina or anyone else see his ride if they didn't have to. Her monstrous bike was parked out front. Terry took a moment to look it over. It was a real piece of work, developed by some kind of mad scientist. It would probably be too big for him, but Angelina was a bit over six feet tall. He could imagine the feel of something like this, barreling down highways at drag-strip speeds, cornering without hardly slowing down. It wouldn't feel like you were turning, so much as the world was being forced to tilt under you.

He whistled as he walked around the other side. Angelina had tilted it too far. Some of the outer panels on the left side were mangled and burnt. It was hard to tell in the carnival lighting of the Happy Burro's neon sign, but some of the damage looked almost like puncture wounds. He couldn't imagine her taking this kind of spill without getting seriously hurt... but she was here, obviously.

It was a jumping night at the Happy Burro, packed with town-kids cramming down chili and beer in preparation for a night of carousing and gravel-roading. A family of mildly nervous-looking tourists sat at a center table, the wife eyeing the beer she thought her husband would have known better than to order. Angelina was waiting in the same booth as before, twirling her finger around the rim of a pint glass, looking absolutely smoking in a black-and-flame tank-top and leather. She'd let her hair down. Terry was buzzed enough not to feel self-conscious – buzzed enough in fact to think himself charming – when he stopped, leaning on the back of the booth, looked her over and said, “Hot damn!”

She smirked. “Oh, Romeo! Sit your ass down.”

“Yes ma'am!”

“Oh, don't give me that crap.” She pushed a pint his way. 

Terry raised it in toast. “Hey, here's to you living through last night.”

She squinted at him, eyebrows knitting. “What do you mean by that?”

He shrugged. “I saw your bike. Hell of a spill you took.”

“Oh,” she leaned back. “That. Just pushed it a little too hard, had a little too much fun. Not as bad as it seems. Owner's gonna give me grief, but I didn't break nothing important.”

A shouting match at the bar turned into a real sloppy fight. Terry turned around, saw an unfamiliar chubby biker chick standing with a group of men. She had thick red hair, lush pierced lips, and tight jeans tucked into high black boots. She was short, thick and curvy, bulging out of her tank top, pushing the limits of the structural engineering of her bra and her jeans as she guffawed at the two men tussling in front of her. Her other suitors – locals Terry often rode with – mocked the brawlers as the bouncers hauled them out the door. The strange chick was obviously overjoyed to be the reason for the brawl. She laughed, hoisted a pitcher, and started chugging. 

Not exactly Terry's type, but he could see how some men found such a...erm... _bountiful_ physique alluring. Kind of how five cheeseburgers were better than one. He grinned at Angelina and cocked an eyebrow at the scene. “Friend of yours?”

She snorted. “Hell no, and good riddance. Trash like her give us a bad name, and propagate the myth of the back-saddle biker slut.”

Terry glanced over just as the redhead stuffed a whole line of shot glasses in her cleavage. The suitors stared, salivating. If they'd had them, the chumps' tails would have been wagging. “Yep... that they do.” It took an effort to stop watching, until he remembered how much better the view across the table was.

Angelina smirked as his eyes flickered over her. “So, do you always keep the... how'd you put it... 'Absolutely freaking gorgeous strangers' waiting while you pre-game?”

He spread his hands in a placating gesture. “Sorry... rough day at work. Security was tight, everyone was jumpy... you heard the news, right?”

“I know a bit about it.”

“Yeah, they're trying to be a bit hush. But let's just say that by the time I dragged my sorry ass home, all I could think about was a beer a few minutes of peace and quiet.”

“And that's supposed to be a good excuse?”

“I'll pick up your tab.”

She leaned back and lifted her glass. “Forgiven.”

He toasted her, took a drink, burped and said, “So, how about this interview? Fire away.”

She sucked the bottom corner of her lip. “Eh, not yet. Let's just talk. Tell me more about your day?”

“Why?”

“I just want to make sure you get to really relax, get past the distractions before we go dumpster-diving for memories of your glory days.”

Terry thumped his temple. “'Dumpster'? You know, flattery will get you nowhere.”

“C'mon. If your day was so terrible, then spill it. Blow off the steam, or whatever.”

Terry hesitated. This was odd but... well, if she wanted to hear him bitch, he didn't mind. Maybe this was good journalism, building rapport or something. What did he know? “Well, I'm not sure just what all I can say or not. But there was some kinda incident last night that had security up today. Soldiers on-site, when they usually just patrol drones out through the desert.” A low rumble filled the room, rising fast then fading slow. “Hear that? Don't normally hear fighters on patrol, not in Beatty. It's just worrisome, is all. I'm no soldier, not used to thinking of myself as in harm's way... though I know that's stupid. We're all in danger, what with them 'Ceptics running around.”

“What?” Her voice went cold, her face hard and immobile.

Terry cocked an eyebrow. “You ain't heard that? 'Ceptic, short for Decepticon. It's a joke. I thought everyone knew that one.”

“Oh. A joke?” She cocked her head to one side, then her face abruptly melted into flirty mirth and she busted out laughing. “'Ceptics! Hah! I like that! Not too far off for some of them.”

Terry laughed with her, relieved that she'd gotten it. He'd _thought_ she was smart, and would hate to be wrong. “Heh, yeah. I wish someone coulda re-purposed Ol' Megatron's scraps for a crap-tank. Woulda been fitting!”

“hell yeah!” She said, and then her voice went a touch serious. “You have no idea!” They clinked glasses, downed the beer and called for another round.

“So,” asked Angelina, “what about your boss and that guy from DEPA? They still giving you a hard time?”

“ _DARPA_. And, no, my boss is a good dude. He'll bust our chops for show when he has to, but he's really got our backs. And Braithwait – the DARPA guy - won't be much of a bother. He's got-- er... their business out here's done. They're packin' it in, and the whole damn convoy's headin' back East first thing tomorrow.” 

“ That so?” She leaned forward to refill his glass from the sweating pitcher of beer, giving him a bit of a show down her tank. He knew she knew just what she was doing, and he didn't mind a bit. “So they're leaving early?”

“Yeah, they're splitting at five, before I go on, so I won't even have to see them again. Only time they bothered to do something on schedule.”

“So, back to normal for you, eh?”

“I could use some normal. You don't even know.” He leaned back. “So, enough about me. How about this interview?”

Angelina took a long drink. “Actually I--”

A lightbulb went off in Terry's head and, considering his state, editing protocols didn't step in between the thought and his mouth. “'Enough about me!' I said. Then 'Interview me'! Hah!”

She laughed again, a bit too loud, and touched his hand. “Goof. No, I got too buzzed waiting around for your ass. Let's skip it till tomorrow.”

Terry frowned. “Really? But I just got here.”

She smiled that beautiful, wolfish smile that got _his_ tail waggling. “Oh, we ain't goin' nowhere. You offered to buy, so I wanna get wasted!”

+++++

It was a couple of hours later that they fell out the front door of the Happy Burro, laughing, holding each-other up. They passed by her crazy franken-bike, and Terry stopped.

“Hey, you said y'd gimme a ride on that thing.”

“In a minute.” She pulled on his arm. “C'mon.”

Terry waved his hand up at the broad march of the Milky Way. “Great night for a ride. I know a-- Say, are you ok to drive that thing?”

“Ahh, he practically drives himself. C'mon.” She pulled him around the corner of the Happy Burro. “I got something I wanna show you.”

She pulled them into the windowless driveway behind the bar, where shadows hid the trash cans and everything else. She wasn't one to hold back. Before he knew it her mouth was on his, warm and hungry, opening to him. He pulled her tight to him, and she grabbed on just as fiercely, lacing the fingers of one hand through his hair, the other squeezing his ass. Her tongue sought his, teasing him, coaxing his into her mouth.

_I could get used to this. I'll take crappy days, if my nights are like this!_

She shifted her weight, so he leaned back against the wall, letting her weight settle against him. He slid his hand down, grabbed her perfect, tight rump. She hiked that leg up, running it along his side, wrapping it behind him. Her cheek went taut under his hand. He went taut too. She ground her hips against him, and made a hungry sound deep in her throat. Terry lost all sense of self, all sense of care, got lost in the hunger of--

“ Eat dis, _bagascia!_ ” 

With a brutal _whirr_ and a _thunk,_ a spinning sawblade slammed into the side of Angelina's face, showering Terry in fluids and bits of hot metal. The woman lurched back with the force of the hit, shrieking like a banshee. She collapsed to her knees, hands covering the wound, leaking dark fluids around the embedded sawblade.

Terry stared, dumbfounded, stomach churning with horror and beer. He looked right, saw Pavi standing bold in the mouth of the alley. The robot yanked back on the cable, and the sawblade flew back into its niche in his arm. A couple of Angelina's fingers flew with it, along with more screaming. The fingers sparked and waggled on the ground. Pavi armed his cannon.

“Pavi! What the--”

_“_ _ _What are you?!”__ screamed a new voice. It was like Angelina's, but warped and shrill and razor-edged.

Terry turned at the snarling voice and watched Angelina's skin and clothes shrivel, split, and peel away, nanomaterial darkening and packing itself up, revealing an angular skeletal thing within. Components popped out from its body: a fringe of hooked spikes behind its head like a Dracula collar; jagged blades along its arms and shins; a mass of razor-thin, ribbon-like extensions fanned out behind its legs like tail feathers as it stood. It flexed one hand, extruding chrome talons from its fingertips; the other hand dripped sparks and burning fluids from severed stumps. The _thing_ still looked feminine, with the killer curves and long limbs of Angelina, but all worked out in blades and angles, and shifting internal gizmos. The Angelina-thing pinned Pavi with blazing green eyes, hesitating to move, and hissed through needle-teeth, “What the hell _are_ you?!”

“What am I? What am I?” Pavi's voice went all wise-guy tough. He looked at Terry, aping perplexity. “She wants to know what I am.” He shouted at Angelina, “You wanna know what I am?” He zipped forward on his wheelie-feets, saw-blades whirring at the end of his arm. The Angelina-thing blocked, the blades biting deep into her forearm. She caught Pavi's other fist in her good hand, the force of his rush slamming them back against the wall. Pavi leaned in close, looking her right in the eye. “I'm the giant cazzo that's aboudda wreck you up!” His other hand, the one she held, split open, exposing the whirling barrel of his little cannon, and he blasted her good hand apart.

The Angelina-thing howled, an ultrasonic wail like dental drills and heavy bass in Terry's ears, and straight-kicked Pavi across the alley. She jumped up, climbed backwards up the wall, jumped the gap to the other, then threw herself up higher still. Her chrome-bladed body jerked and shifted with each move, her arms tucking in, hips popping up to where her shoulders were, legs fanning open into wing-struts, shimmering ribbons of rigid nanomaterial snapping out to fill out the wings. She became a giant metal bird before his eyes and shot off with a screech.

“Terry! Comma comma!” Pavi grabbed his arm, transformed, and threw him in the saddle. “Eez notta time to smella de roses!”

Terry barely had enough sense in place to grab the handlebars before Pavi accelerated toward the end of the alleyway. Two eyes appeared at the end, angular, glowing green, low to the ground. Terry squinted through the haze of shock, terror and cheap beer and saw the biggest, meanest dog he'd ever imagined, arcs of lightning jumping between its teeth.

It barked, double-rows of counter-sawing teeth gnashing as it coiled to leap at them.

Pavi did that controlled-explosion, transforming-under-your-ass-and-throwing-you-into-the-air bit, launching Terry high and leaping up after him. Pavi let loose with a flurry of cannon fire, pegging the devil-dog in the front paw, back of the neck, and left rump as they sailed over the savage beast. Pavi grabbed Terry with his other hand, guiding his fall so he landed right back in the saddle. The scooter hit the pavement, then sped away from the wounded Deceptidog, arms tucking neatly back into the chassis of the Vespa.

Terry slid forward in the saddle, squeezing the handlebars and hiding his tight-shut eyes behind the console. He resisted the urge to crawl down into the footwell-space. “Pavi?”

“Si?”

“You're frickin' awesome.”

“Si, I know it.”

“I think I pissed myself.”

“I smell it. Nasty meatball.”

“What the hell just happened?”

“I knew this was-a comin', ever since I smella ze energon onna you.”

“What? You smelled what? Oh, yeah...” He remembered then; _How comma you reeka de energon?_ The first thing Pavi had said to him. “You _knew_ this was gonna happen?”

“Well, not all ze details, ze drooling and ze pheremones. I justa knew zere was another transiformer around. Tonight I sneeka over, saw freaking _Butcher_ waiting outside-a you social nexus, and knew eez deep caca for you.”

“Butcher?”

“Ze effing mean monster-chopper, squatting in ze open like-a he owna ze road. _Succhiacazzi_. Bet it was him, sniffin' arounda ze facility last night, seein' if he canna grabba ze QRT.”

Terry remembered some of the rumors he'd heard, the reason the old Valley Highway was closed. “This guy... could he take down an F-35?”

“ Ehh... lucky shot maybe. But really, eez doubtful... but Carrion could.”

“Carrion? Who's Carrion?”

“Heez bitch, zee one who wasa gonna bleed you out in ze alleyway.”

“Angelina?”

“Si! Carrion and Snarl, Butcher's Bitches! Eeza evil threesome right there!”

They pulled up to his trailer. Pavi shifted just as soon as Terry got off the saddle and grabbed his shoulder, shaking a robotic finger in his face. “Okay, just ze essentials. Una minuto, anda we gone.”

“Sure, sure uh-- Wait!” Terry pulled away. “Whaddya mean 'gone'? Where are we going?”

Pavi groaned. “C'mon! Donna you get it? Carrion came to you, si? She knew who you were, si?”

“Yeah.”

“Just like-a me, she spent maybe two second on ze wiki, pegged you as her way inna Yucca Mountain. She come on real nice, make you wanna talk, no?”

Terry shuddered. “Schee-it.” _Yeah, she pinned me like a bug, all smart and nurturing, keenly interested and so god-damn sexy._ “I'm such an easy mark. She had me pegged.”

“ You were-a gonna peg _her_. She got snippers for zees, downa dere. Get you right under her control, bite-a you face shut so eez no-a screaming, zen one _schnick_ and you bleed out pronto.”

Terry gagged. She'd felt so real, soft and firm in all the right ways, that mouth, so hot and wet and hungry. She'd been more than perfect, an absolute dream. But _real_ _,_ with odd freckles on her shoulder, a scar on her chin, a skin-tag behind her right ear. She'd even _smelled_ right. He needed a shower, bad. He bent over, hands on his knees, feeling the world spin, wondering if he'd puke.

Pavi shook him out of it, pulled him upright. “Terry! Eez no time for zees. Getta you gun, food, whatever meatballs need to rough it. We got ze jump on Carrion before. I confuse her, no havin' ze energon siginiature. That one's notta gonna happen again. One thinga certain man; they pissed off and _they know where you live!”_

The words were like a shock going down his spine. Terry gulped and ran inside. “Rough it, rough it...” He scrabbled for his hiking bag, threw in a couple of random cans and the gun, heart pounding, then ran into Pavi in the doorway.

“ Comma, comma, we musta go Terry!” Pavi dragged him out, eyes darting right, left, scanning the sky.

Terry shrugged into the bag. “Allright, allright. Shift already, and let's get out of here!”

“Nada chance! They too close, I smell it!” Pavi took his hand and hauled him away from the road, toward the scrabbly, tangle-brushed hill behind his trailer. “Ze roads is where-a they gonna look. Zees way!”

“Yeah, but--”

Pavi clamped a hand over his mouth and hissed. “Move-a you ass! They coming. _They close!”_

It was the kind of thing you instinctively did not ignore when you heard someone say it like that. Tugging his bag higher, Terry pushed off at a jog, leading them along a barely-there game trail in the scrub. In the walkabouts he'd taken since moving out here, he'd never seen any real game. But judging from the trail, it wasn't used by much bigger than roadrunners.

They got just over a rise when Pavi grabbed him and yanked him down. The robot held a finger up to his mouth... speaker... thing. “ _Silenzio_! Butcher's here.”

Following Pavi's lead, Terry laid out flat and squirmed up to the lip of the rise to watch the road. Angelina's bike – no, _Butcher_ \- pulled off the road, rolling slow, engine going silent as soon as it came around the bend. Its lights winked out, but Terry saw it had a sidecar attached now. It crept up the drive, nothing but the whisper of gravel to give it away. Two figures, darker than the shadows, jumped from the bike. There was a short, fat one; Snarl the devil-dog, Terry guessed. She turned in the moonlight,and he recognized the thick girl from the bar, the one Angelina so thoroughly loathed. The other one was tall and lithe, sexy even from this far away in the pitch dark. His stomach lurched at the thought. _It's not Angelina_ , he told himself. _There never was an Angelina Cooke, just_ _Carrion_ _. The lying bitch._

The two approached the trailer, each angling for a different end, skirting the glow from the lights he'd left on. Carrion held the stump of her missing hand close to her belly. The other hand looked more like a pincer with its missing fingers.

“ Terry?” It was Angelina's voice, carrying on the breeze, warm and lusty and wide-open. “C'mon Terry, it's me. You can't just get me hot like that and _leave me_.”

The fat bitch's voice was lower, huskier, souding like miles of whiskey and cigarettes. “You sound like a lot of _fun_ , Terry. Hope you don't mind if I join in.”

Carrion reached her end of the trailer, his bedroom. Her skin peeled back, exposing her true form. Sparks dripped from the gouge in her face. “Teeeerry, I _want_ it.”

Snarl chuckled, dropping to all fours, dog-shaped, bunching to leap. “ _Hur hur._ Yeah, me too!”

“ Ooooohhhh, Terrrry,” said Carrion, her voice pitching high and wanton, porno-star perfect. Her next words came out mocking, her voice hard-edged and electronic. “I _need_ you!” She cackled.

“Yeah,” said Snarl. “Let's make it a threesome!”

“Or a foresome!” The new voice was growly, male, the thick voice of a thousand barfights and back-alley stabbings. It was a voice meant for shouting things like “Bite the curb!” Butcher unhooked from the sidecar and unfolded, the monster chopper twisting and jerking until it stood tall, a ten-foot brute with a giant hook in one hand and an enormous cleaver held high in the other, its blade glowing red. Butcher chopped down, slicing through Terry's trailer in a clean, molten-edged cut.

Terry struggled to keep silent.

As soon as he struck, Butcher's Bitches threw themselves at the trailer, slashing through the walls and clawing their way inside. Being handless apparently didn't slow Carrion much; she had pointy slicey bits all over her person. They cackled, higher and louder as they smashed, slashed and burrowed through Terry's home. Butcher dug his hook into the cut he'd made and pried the trailer open, pulling it off its blocks and splitting it like a can of biscuits.

“Come out little maggot,” shouted Butcher. “And bring your _freak_ with you!” The severed halves of Terry's home shuddered, windows smashing outward as the two smaller fiends gutted his trailer. Butcher waited, flexing his grip on hook and cleaver, over-the-shoulder cannon twitching to follow his gaze, ready for his hounds to flush out his quarry.

The Bitches came out empty-handed.

“They ain't here,” said Snarl, the hint of a whine in her voice as she morphed into her humanoid shape.

Carrion came to Butcher's side. “That Autobot _ffffffffREAK_ must have them on the run.” She looked at her ruined hands. “When I get my teeth on him, I'll--”

Butcher stowed his weapons and back-handed Carrion with a fist the size of a bowling ball. She collapsed with an angry shriek. Butcher roared at her, “You're the one who screwed this up! Playing your stupid games when you could have just stabbed him!”

“ Butcher, I was just--”

“You were just being a dumb bitch! Humans are meat, and meat is weak... but you messed it up anyway! And now this meatling and his sparkless freak Autobot are going to blow our cover if we don't find them and kill them!”

Snarl came to his other side, reaching for his forearm. “I woulda done it right, Butch. I don't play with my food like Twiggy here.”

Butcher shoved her away. “You ain't no better! Little asshole doesn't even have a real energon core, isn't really a transformer, isn't more than a tiny little _scooter_ , but you let him get away!”

“Butch,” said Angelina, “Stop.” Her voice got a hard edge. “You hit me again and I'll-- Aaaaurgh!” Her words garbled into a polyphonic wail as a wash of blue light flared in her chest. A couple of molten sparks dribbled from gaps in her torso.

“OR YOU'LL WHAT?!” Butcher roared while she wailed. “You won't do a damn thing but what I tell you!” He kicked her over, then tucked himself back into his vehicle mode. “We're goin huntin'. Imma get me that Quantum Resonance Tuner, and then I'm gonna _take over_ _._ Nothin's gonna stop me; not a couple of rats, and not you useless bimbos.

“Get in the air, bitch. Snarl's with me.”

Nanomaterial fluttered back over Snarl's frame, replicating skin and clothes, perfectly hiding the monster within. She climbed in the saddle. Butcher continued, “Snarl, get on the net. Find out what's ahead, where those queers might be going. Birdie, scour the area. They may be hiding, not running. I'll show you how to handle a couple of rats!”

Gravel flew in a rooster-tail as Butcher donutted around his front wheel and tore out onto the highway, heading away from town, the only other way they could have gone.

Groaning, Carrion shoved to her knees, then to her feet. She jerked and clinked her way into her bird shape and took to the air.

  
  


  



	9. Gully

Chapter  
9: Gully

Terry lead them along the trails through the desert to a dry gully around the hill behind his trailer. It was dodgy work, with Pavi scanning the skies and pulling them to cover whenever Carrion swept near, but they made it into the scrubby, rubble-strewn gash in the earth without her raising any obvious alarm. They set up camp in a spot where flash floods had under-cut the bank, making enough of a cave to cover them from her murderous eyes. Terry sank down, back against the gritty wall of the gully, feeling miserable.

“My bike, then my home. You assholes are gonna take everything from me, aren't you?”

The robot squatted next to him. He kept his voice low. “Terry, I never wanted--”

“ _I_ never wanted any part in this! I never asked you to shove yourself into my life! And just for an unnecessary robbery, a stunt to prove yourself to the big guys!”

“You wish I nevera come here?”

“Damn right I wish that!”

Pavi growled... then stopped himself. “Fine, say I never come. Still this Angelina _fighetta_ would have come to you, with her smiles and her games, bouncing her babos at you. Still she woulda used you up and spit you out. Only tonight, insteada homeless inna gutter with a friend, you'd be dead in ze alley, bled out through you _cazzo_. Eez better, no?”

Terry sighed. “Why you always gotta make me feel like the asshole? And why did she try to kill me tonight? What was the point?”

“ You were-a no good to her no more. She wanna throw you away so you donna blowa ze plans.”

Terry ran his fingers through his hair, resisting the urge to yank it all out. “But what good was I in the first place? It's not like I could have given her a tour of the place. She runs on energon like the rest of 'em, right?”

“Si. Imma ze only one.”

“So what good was I to her?”

Pavi shrugged. “Eh, _informazion_ , mebbe. Whatever.” The robot wasn't really listening anymore. He stared at his wheelie-feets, eyelights dim. “Ze only one...” he muttered, “... ze freak.”

“Aww, what are you on about now?” Terry scoffed. “You cryin' cuz _Butcher_ and his Bitches are bigots?”

“You donna understand. Transiformers, _real_ people, zey trace zey spark back to ze source, ze prima offa ze Primas. But Pavi's gotta no spark. Que make-a me on heez table. He splice a few core-program samples together to make-a cheap personality matrix. That's Pavi: leftover programming anna Mister Fusion.”

Terry cocked an eyebrow at him. “Mister F--”

“Si, I watcha movies like anyone. I was switch on two years ago, beena confine to ze HQ zees whole time. Always 'Move it, tiny,' 'Back in the lab, chop-shop,' or 'Hey, Splutter, how's it sparking? Oh, that's right...' and zey laugh and laugh!” When Pavi quoted, Terry recognized recordings of Ironhide's thick British accent, Dino's bandito voice, even Optimus' rumble. Then Pavi re-played a scratchy bit of audio from _Little Shop of Horrors_ : “Feed me, Seymore!” followed by staticy laughter.

Terry scowled. “That was Bumblebee, wasn't it?”

Pavi nodded.

“Hasn't his voice been like that for like a century? Can't Ratchet fix a broken sound system? I mean, Optimus _died,_ and he came out okay.”

Pavi shook his head. “Donna letta Ratchet hear dat. Hesa real diva when you challenge his professional prognosisises. He canna just say he no good at audio repair.”

Terry sighed. “I hear ya. Doctors...”

“ Si. Prima donnas...” Pavi stared across the moon-lit gully, then turned beck to Terry, eyelights shining. “They give-a me case-a dog food once. Say NEST was havina budget cuts. They say 'Hey, you can run on zat, eh?'”

Terry shook his head. “I'm sorry. What a bunch of skidmarks.”

Pavi shrugged. “It wasna so bad onna pizza.”

“Jesus Christ...”

Terry crossed his arms and squirmed a little, trying to find a spot where nothing was stabbing him in the butt. “So what are we doing out here? Shouldn't we get to Beatty?”

Pavi shook his head. “Too dangerous.” He pointed up. “Carrion, she-a lookin' for us. Nocte, roads-a empty, Butcher can do what he wants. We go when there's-a traffic. Butcher won' wanna expose himself in public.”

Terry snorted. “Yeah, that's Carrion's specialty.” He pulled his hat down over his eyes and tried to hold on to what warmth he could. It was going to be a long, cold night out here without so much as a sleeping bag, and they didn't dare set a fire. He kept the modified gun close. Hopefully it wouldn't blow up in his hand if he had to use it. He wasn't anxious to try it out, but wouldn't pass up a clear shot at Carrion if he could. Hell, he'd probably go at her with nothing more than a wrench, given the opportunity. She'd tried to _kill_ him. Used him up then thrown him out. And she'd put on the right act for it, all right. The bod, the hair, the tight biker-bitch outfits, that all got him hooked. Add in the warmth, the interest, the little nugget about how killing Perotti was never even his fault, wiping his guilt away, and he was eating right out of her hands. And he couldn't even figure out what _for_. What could he have given her, drunk and drooling down her shirt, that she and Butcher needed? They were after the QRT, but he couldn't possibly have gotten them into the--

“ Aww sonofa!” Terry sat up straighter, started pawing at his pocket.

Pavi lifted his head. “Eh? Whassa madda fo you?”

“The convoy! I told her about the convoy!” He pulled his phone out, tried to bring up his contacts with nervous, tired fingers.

“What? Whaddaya mean?”

“I gotta call Jones. Shit, where's his number?”

“Datta smartie-phone?”

“Yeah. So wha-”

Pavi snatched it out of Terry's hands.

“Hey! Give that back!”

“GPS, ID info, facial-recognition on ze photos, zees ting eeza freakin' homing beacon.” His thumb brushed the screen, and the phone lit up. “Uffa! Eez on!” The blades popped out, rathceting up into his fist, shredding the phone.

“Jackass!” Terry lunged for the phone, too slow to stop Pavi. Little bits of plastic and circuitry fell from the robot's fingers.

Pavi pushed him back, chiding with tooth-sucking noises. “ _Ti sta bene!_ Cell network security eeza cheesecloth. I could buga-you phone with three line-a code! Carrion, shesa ze pro at zees!”

“How am I supposed to call Jones?!”

“You don't!”

“But... the convoy! They know when the convoy's leaving. _I told her!_ ”

Pavi shrugged. “What convoy?” He settled back into his spot against the wall of the gully.

“The DARPA convoy. Carrying the QRT! It leaves in the morning!”

Pavi flinched, eyes dimming, then let out a groan. “Oh sheeta. Terry...”

“I'm sorry!”

“Terry, you sucha dumb-ass _babaluke_.”

“ I'm sorry! We were just... we were just chatting. Just two people in a bar, you know. Just me and a chick... a really, really hot chick who just asked how my... just wanted to know how my day went and... And she was so interested, I just...” He lost steam, face-to-face with the dispassionate truth. “Jeez, I'm a freakin' moron.”

Pavi patted his shoulder. “Okay, okay, I underastand. Eez harda to tink withchyoo brains inna you balls, no?”

“Screw you, robot.”

“Look, eez okay, no problemo. Soona we get some-a traffic for cover, we hit ze road, warn whoever we needa warn. Right now, we stay put, gotta hide. You seena Butcher. Pavi's a macho maniac, yeah, so tough and brawny like a leetle bull... but I canna fight one like dat.”

“Great.” Terry settled back into his spot, arms tight across his chest. “You're a real pal, know that? Stuck out in the desert, home all torn up...” he stopped himself. “Never mind. I'm just being bitchy.” Pavi was right; Butcher and the Bitches had marked him before Pavi ever showed up. It was just so much more convenient to blame Pavi.

“Eez okay. Look, getta some sleeps. Then we'll do what we can do.”

“Sure.” Terry fished out a granola bar, and offered one to Pavi.

“No, grazi. Keepa-you human food. Any biomass does it for me.” With a flick of his wrist, the whirring blades shot out into the night. They came back with a fist-sized cactus lobe.

Terry gaped. “You gonna eat _that_?”

“ Si!” Pavi hefted the spiny meal. “Taste sense is optional add-on. I just switch it off.” With that, Pavi dropped his jaw open, unhinging like a snake's. Blades snicked around inside like a nightmarish cuisinart. The transformer pushed the oblong in with one smooth motion, like some kind of massive, thorny suppository. Blades sliced and mashed it apart, and internal gizmos whirred and burbled.

Terry tried not to watch. “Jesus...”

Pavi clicked his jawparts back in place. “Eh, not to bad. Lotsa fiber. Needa marinara.”

“So, do you use up everything you eat, or is there like... waste?”

Pavi looked away. “Dat parta ze system... Que, he never finish right before he die. I don' wanna talk about it.”

Pavi wasn't exactly circumspect in most cases. Or classy. If there was something he didn't want to describe, Terry was sure he didn't want to know about it.

Visions of Butcher, Snarl, and especially Carrion swam before his eyes. _Bitch_ , Butch had called her. _Bimbo_. But she obeyed him. Followed him. And she'd been so _good_ , so compassionate, funny and... human. It was confusing. 'Ceptics had mimicked human women before, true, but Terry had never heard of such a good, spot-on, _human_ portrayal. How could she really be _that_ good at acting like a good person, and be a murdering monster? How could she be so intelligent, and be a slave someone like Butcher?

“Pavi?”

“Si?”

“Where the hell does a bitch like Carrion learn to be so damn good?”

Pavi shook his head, face dropping. “Dat story. Si, I knowa dat story. Eez ze only kinna story comma outta civil war...”

Pavi projected a holographic recording into the air between them. He showed scenes from long ago and far away, segments of Transformer history he'd downloaded...

__A battle on a rugged, ravaged landscape. Not Cybertron, but an organic world; there were ruins of trees here, bones of giant beasts, but all burned and broken. Terry could tell the two sides apart. He'd seen enough vids of recordings the Autobots had released to the Earthlings. The 'Ceptics were angular, beastly and savage. The Autobots were noble, organized... and losing ground.__

__The Autobots made a stand at the mouth of a canyon, its walls covered in cliff-dwellings of alien architecture. Faces watched from within the ruins; the eyes were wide and slanted, the faces plated in chitin, but they were__ _ _people__ _ _, all the same. Primitive innocents.__

__The Autobots repelled the Decepticon advance, bottlenecking the foe perfectly at the narrow mouth of the canyon, a textbook military tactic. But one rather small fiend flanked them, climbing the cliffs out of sight of the defenders. He perched at the top of the canyon, ready to pounce, shoulder-cannon ready, meathook and cleaver in hand, glowing red.__

__Butcher.__

__A Autobot flew up from the embattled defenders, a beautiful, screaming chrome eagle ripped right from the cover of a Judas Priest album. She lofted high, dodging and banking incoming fire, eyes on the 'Ceptic front, scouting.__

__She caught sight of Butcher, wheeled about and stooped, claws out and guns blazing, screaming for vengeance.__

__Butcher prevailed. He caught her assault on his shield, lopped off one wing, then drove his hook through her side, pulling her from the sky. A stunner-pulse raced along the hook, into her body, and her eyelights went out.__

__Butcher left her there, leaped from the cliff and into the midst of the Autobots, breaking their front enough for the rest of his comrades to pour in. There was no chance for a retreat, not even a rout. The Decepticons slaughtered them all, Autobots and aliens alike.__

__Butcher didn't stay for the party. He climbed up to where he'd left the chrome eagle, unconscious but alive. He cracked open her body and installed a device on her energon core. Then he sealed her back up and jolted her awake.__

“ Core shunt,” said Pavi. “It pierces ze power-core, floods out ze ergenergon destroying ze body wit ze soul. Raw energon eez highly reactive. He can remote-activate when he wants. She tamper, it activate too. Her name wassa Sunwing, until Butcher make-a her heez slave.”

__She writhed, screamed, and transformed. Even maimed, Terry recognized Carrion, though her robotic features were more refined... the valiant, beautiful face of an Autobot. She tried to fight him, until he demonstrated the shunt. A tiny leak of her own energon dripped into her body. She screamed and staggered, smoke and spark pouring from her mouth and vents in her torso armor.__

__She gave up the fight and sank to her knees. She looked up at Butcher, eyes dimming, and cowered at his feet as he laughed.__

_Pavi's holo-show winked out. Terry blinked away the after-images, and rubbed his tired eyes. “That's it? She works for him, or he'll kill her?”_

_Pavi nodded somberly. “Butcher holda she life inna he hands. He not so smart, but he invent ze shunt alla by heemself. He know what he want. Like all 'Ceptics, Butcher wanna power over others. Sunwing was heez first slave. Take-a her freedom, her name. Take-a her heart. Snarl comma later, a lesser 'Ceptic he ensnare.”_

_Terry just shook his head, unbelieving. “She turned into a monster, rather than die. She'll manipulate and kill someone like me just to stay alive?”_

_“_ _Love of life izza powerful driver. And besides, not even alla_ _Autobots_ _putta zo much stock inna meat-life.”_

_“_ _But... but she just_ _folded_. She was an Autobot, and now she's all twisted and... and evil! _By choice!_ ”

Pavi _tsked._ “Eez not on/off switch. She start with that one choice, that she too afraid to die. Zen you add on centuries of being enslaved to Butcher, doing his bidding, making that choice over and over again. It chip away her spirit, change who she eez. Sunwing lose herself, and all thassa left eez Carrion.”

_Terry crossed his arms. “Yeah, well I wouldn't do it. Wouldn't go 'round killin' people just to save my own skin. I'd a' let him kill me.”_

_“_ _Hmph. You thinka so, meatball? Itsa lotta human child-soldiers woulda said ze sam ting.”_

_There was a period of silence, then Terry said, “You're only two, Pavi?”_

_“_ _Si. Runnaway from home, getta me into trouble; eez terrible twos.”_

_“_ _You're too damn perceptive for a two-year-old.”_

_“_ _Si. I know it.”_

Terry finished his granola bar and tucked himself in for the night. If he was lucky, he was still drunk enough to fall asleep out here. If he was really lucky, he wouldn't be snakebit before morning.

  
  


  



	10. Flight

Chapter  
10: Flight

Terry started awake. He thought he'd heard something... a shrill cry? That was the trouble with camping; you heard all the weird crap civilization kept away. His heart was pounding, old animal instincts kicking in.

“Pavi? You hear something? Wazzat real, or a dream?” He blinked, trying to see in the dim light. The first blush of dawn was just pinking the skies. The robot was slumped against the wall, inert. Terry leaned over and shook him. “Pavi? Pavi?”

A scream tore through the air overhead, savage and avian, but tinged with saw-edged digital modulation that spread out over a range of painful frequencies. Terry froze with panic. Pavi's eyelights flickered on. “ _Scopi un'anatra!_ ” The robot lurched forward, tackling Terry. His vacated little dirt-nook erupted with bright, sizzling chunks flying outward, _ch-thunk_ ing off of Pavi's back. Pavi looped one arm across Terry's chest, yanked them out into the gully, and two tons of pressure and noise fell on Terry's head. They accelerated like a bat out of hell, the gully speeding by just below his feet. He managed to suck in just enough air to start screaming.

“Shut uppa you face!” Pavi shouted.

Terry could barely hear Pavi over the whining roar that echoed through the gully. He craned his neck over Pavi's shoulder and saw that that stupid orange cargo box the robot kept on his back had cracked open; it was a screaming jetpack. Then he saw Carrion, in her giant metal raptor form, closing fast and stooping for the kill. This was his first good look at her. Despite the name, she wasn't a vulture, but a short-necked chrome eagle with the wingspan of a condor; just like in Pavi's video, but more savagely pointy, in the style of Decepticons. Thrusters under her wings blazed, and tiny barrels protruded from under her chin. Her razor wings shimmered in the starlight, and her multi-segmented beak split wide in another ear-splitting shriek.

“Pavi!”

“I know!” Pavi rolled belly-up, putting Terry between him and the on-coming talons, and fired with his free hand.

Carrion flinched, dodged, but lost little ground. She came on fast, rushing up the gully.

Pavi rolled over again. “I canna fly like-a dis for long!”

“The walls!” shouted Terry. He pointed ahead, to a pile of stones perched on the edge of the gully. “Bring 'em down on her!”

Pavi rolled again as they passed under the stones, blasting the dirt out from under the pile. He timed it perfectly, the avalanche of dirt and melon-sized rocks pummeling down on the shrieking harpy. Terry let out a whoop as the rubble pinned her down, her flapping wings vanishing in the cloud of dust.

Grunting, Pavi angled up, flying them out of the gully, arcing up and over the desert, over the ruins of Terry's house, to the highway. Pavi dropped him, then thudded down, his backpack thrusters shutting down and clamming back up inside the orange cargo box. They both stood for a moment, hunched over, hands on their knees, panting.

As soon as he got his wind back and his head stopped spinning, Terry gasped out, “Why... why are you panting... too?”

Pavi blinked, stood up straight. “Eh...” he hesitated. “I was justa... like I say, we wanna fit in.”

Terry shook his head. “Loopy goomba...” He shouldered his backpack, shocked he'd kept a hold of it, and clapped the robot on the shoulder. “Killer work, anyway.”

“Eh, fuhgeddaboudit.”

Terry tossed his head, nodding back towards Beatty. “Well, the bird is down, but the gig is up, right? Butcher's gotta be on the way. What say we cut loose and book it back to Beatty?”

Pavi waved his hand, a dismissive gesture. “C'mon, let's-a wait. Mebbe now I tink I can take him. He ain't so tough.”

“THAT SO?”

They both turned at the gut-punch bellow that rolled over the plain like a thunderclap. Not a hundred yards down the road, between them and Beatty, stood Butcher, a hulking brute lit blood-red in the growing dawn. The Decepticon started running, claws shredding the asphalt as he closed the distance. Pavi and Terry stood mute for a fragile moment, blindsided. Then barrels popped out of Butcher's chest plate, and that over-the-shoulder weapon of his snapped up and took a bead.

Terry stumbled, brain blanking in panic, trying to duck and run at the same time as energy blasts sizzled past them and bullets stitched up the road. Pavi saved his ass again, jerking him left, right, zig-zagging to keep a lock, taking a few shots on his armored hide, then tucking down into scooter-mode, throwing Terry into the saddle.

“Terry! Zee helmit!”

The checkered thing was hanging from the console, banging Terry's knees. “Like it'll help!”

“Eez armor you _testa di cazzo_! Put eet on and get-a low!”

Terry did. Something like tattered silk dripped and slid down from the helmet, clinging its way over him, encasing him, worming its way down to the tips of his fingers, over and through his clothes. He recognized it as the same stuff Carrion used as skin: nanomaterial. It felt like cold bugs crawling over his skin, getting into _all_ the nooks and crannies.

He hated it.

Then something punched him in the kidneys, like a kick from a mule. 

“Ouwf!”

He bent double over the handlebars, struggling to hold on as the pain blanked his mind and washed his vision out in rainbow waves. He got back on the seat, reached back, felt a section of the nano-stuff that had gone steel-hard. It softened under his fingers, and something dropped into his hand. He looked at it – a flattened, warped nugget of metal – one of Butcher's bullets, which would have punched right through him, if not for the nano-stuff.

He decided he liked the nano-stuff just fine.

Pavi gained speed, widening the gap, zig-zagging the energy shots from Butcher's cannon with little regard for the human's equilibrium. In seconds they were running well over sixty, and still accelerating. Butcher wasn't a sharp-shooter, it seemed, but a few more slugs from his chest-mounted pea-shooters pinged off of Pavi's hide. The big cannon seemed to be Pavi's main concern, and he didn't let up on the fancy driving; his path down the highway would probably match a readout of Terry's heartrate pretty well. Missed shots screamed past, blasting molten-edged craters ahead of them.

“Is this guy really this bad a shot?”

“No. But he's gotta wobble. I tink last night your fighters maybe hurt his fire-control. He's gotta visual targeting only, or we'da be slag by now.”

The shots flew even wider as they pulled ahead, and then they stopped. Terry checked the rear-view, saw Butcher dwindling.

“You're losing him!” He let out a whoop.

“Donna speak to soon, meatball.” 

Terry looked again, saw Butcher collapse into his monster-cycle mode. A bike like that should roar when it accelerated, but Butcher ran on something other than gas. Quiet as death, he ate up the road between them. Wherever that damn cannon tucked itself away into Butcher's vehicular anatomy, he didn't seem to have access to it now. That didn't help Terry feel any better as the riderless hog filled the mirror.

There was a double- _whuff_ , followed by a shrill hiss. Two brilliant rockets arched up, curving toward them. They got way too close for comfort before Pavi unfolded his cannon-arm and zapped them out of the air. The fireballs warmed Terry's back, but that was better than the alternative. Pavi took a few shots at Butcher, hitting the mark but not slowing him down appreciably. Pavi's cannon had some kick, but Butcher was made for war.

“Terry? You gotta ze munchies inna you bag?”

“This really the time for that?”

“C'mon. Somezing witta ze pick-me-up. I needa more juice. Hurry!”

Terry dug into the bag, shoving through the odds and ends he'd crammed in during the crazed exodus. Tuna, granola, his modified gun, candy bars... he found an MRE, the good kind, and hauled it out. All the nutrients you could want, plus some instant coffee and laxative chocolate. Even the packaging was biodegradable.

The saddle lifted under him. “Inna here!”

Terry shoved the brick of (according to the label) edibles under the seat, heard the familiar gurgles and whirring start up below him. “Okay, punch it!”

Pavi's voice was muffled. “Urmph! E goffa difest. Uffa momenfo!”

“Digest faster!”

Butcher came alongside them. “Come to me, little maggots! This won't hurt for long!” Some of his segments unfolded, forming an arm reaching out for them.

“Asshole!” Butcher was certainly armored, but armpits were weak points, Terry knew. He'd seen it in a movie or something. He whipped out Pavi's ridiculous beer-powered railgun, keyed the charge lever, ducked Butcher's grabbing claw, and fired into the shadows of his armpit.

The gun didn't explode in Terry's hands, which was a good start. A diamond-bit-tipped smart slug _szzzing_ ed out the barrel, bored deep into something tender, kicking out sparks, and detonated in the monster-bike's guts.

“ _Gyyaaaarrrgh!_ ” Butcher swerved away from the pain, slewing wildly and bleeding speed.

“Yahoo Meatball!” shouted Pavi. “Bravo Bravo! Holda tight!” Pavi opened his cargo box, lit the thrusters, and Terry learned what it felt like to break 200mph on the back of a scooter.

+++++

Terry tucked down low and found his voice after a few dozen miles. He was jumpy, spiky with adrenaline. “Pavi! This gun is awesome!”

“Grazi! Gooda shot!”

“Hey, turn around. We're going the wrong way!”

“You crazy? You gotta penne inna you brains?!”

“But Butcher--”

“You tink he dead? Nono, Butcher eez hurt and peezed off! He was just gonna kill you, but now he gonna eeta you guts with vodka sauce for whatchoo did.”

“But he doesn't have to eat!”

“He make-a ekzeption fora you. Heesa 'Ceptic, remember. And kinda small; inferiority complex worsa dan mine. A real bastardo. He like-a to hurt tings! So, we go zees way. Away from him!”

“Okay. We gotta double-back then. There's an old road ahead. Long way round, but not much traffic, and at these speeds--”

“ _Bené bené_. You be my GPS, I getta you there!”

Terry hunkered down for the ride, holding the gun tight. It was a real piece of work, all right. Terry was glad for all the bored afternoon beer-can-sniping sessions, another form of therapy he'd found out here in empty Nevada. More than likely he'd have to use it again. The clip had less than a dozen smart rounds left, so he'd have to be careful.

This wasn't a game of hiding the QRT from nosy idiot humans anymore, saving the world from accidental harm. Now it was a matter of keeping it away from the 'Ceptics, of saving the world from completely _deliberate_ harm. The way Terry saw it, if it was a choice between DARPA and Megatron, DARPA could have it, and Optimus Prime could negotiate the QRT's safekeeping later.

“I don' like-a dis.”

Terry looked up, saw nothing but straight dark desert highway, flat dirt and scrub, all just taking on the first dull highlights of morning. “What?”

“Butcher. Where izza he? You dinna hurta heem dat bad. And Snarl, she was nadda wid-heem. Zees stinka worse zan you momma's overworked _stronzo_.”

“'Least I had a momma. Anyway, I don't know. But we--” A mile marker whizzed by, way sooner than Terry expected. He wasn't used to going this fast. “Hey! Just ahead's an old crossroad. Right'll take us back to Beatty. Watch for it, cuz it's coming fast!”

“Si!” The headlight flickered, turned, splitting into nested segments which counter-rotated and telescoped out. “I see it, nadda too far off and... _MERDA ARDENTE!_ ”

The vanishing point of the highway lit up like a cerulean star, stacatto lightning flashes illuminating a low, squat shape for the briefest moment before Pavi dumped about 50mph and jerked right, bashing Terry's face against the handlebars. A squadron of energy pulses raced by, one close enough to warm Terry's leg. It was some sort of gun emplacement, a bigger version of Butcher's shoulder-cannon.

“Eeza Snarl!”

“I guessed!” Snarl and her side-car, which of course couldn't be _just_ a side-car. No, of _course_ it had to be a mobile turret, too, squatting fat and mean right over their turn. “Son of a bitch!” Terry hefted his gun, almost anxious for a shot.

“Deez bitches got no sons. Gooda ting, too! Grabba mi handles!”

Snarl let loose with another volley. Pavi transformed, tucking low to the ground, sliding on his back with over 100mph worth of inertia. His handlebars settled around his right knee when he shifted. Terry held on, dragging over the pavement behind the robot. The nanomaterial held, but didn't keep it from hurting. The sudden drop in their profile carried them under Snarl's center-of-mass targeting. They slid by right under the barrels of Snarl's turret, close enough to hear her growl. Pavi blasted wildly at Snarl and her weapons platform. He didn't look back to check the damage, just shifted, hauled Terry back in the saddle, and accelerrated.

Pavi wobbled, finding his balance as the little jetpack fired again. Terry tried not to think too hard about how fast they were going or how tenuous a hold they had on equilibrium; something shaped like a scooter was _not_ meant to perform like this. He just held on and, actually, tried not to think about much at all. If he did, he knew he'd start screaming.

“She blocked our turn!”

“Si! I tinka dey wanna herd us!”

“Of course they want to hurt us! But they're keeping us away from Beatty too!” In the rear-view, Snarl's sidecar hopped up, balancing high on its one wheel, and came after them. “Jeez, how many forms do these things take?”

“Tinka dis way. Long asa dey chasin' us, they canna hit ze convoy.”

“I don't wanna be the bait!” screamed Terry. “You know, this would be a great time to have a phone. Dontcha think?”

Butcher came back over the horizon and caught up to Snarl in her slower high-rolling gyro-balanced monowheel. The brute unfolded one arm, recoupled the sidecar, then smacked the dog-bot in the side of the head.

Terry sighed. “These are some real charming folks. Hey, keep a look out for Carrion. I'm not convinced that rockslide could have killed her.”

“Imma watchin'.”

Terry watched as Butcher closed the distance. He checked his gun, made sure the safety was open and the charge primed. “How long can you keep ahead of them?” 

“Nadda so long. Imma runnin' outta steam fast.” 

Snarl started firing, but not at such a blistering rate; so Pavi had done some damage, at least. Pavi dipped and dodged, trading fire. He spoke again, but with a drawl. “Scootertrash to Rubbertramp. Scootertrash to Rubbertramp. Havin' a breakdown just south of the hot-box. Wouldn't mind a pick-up. Scootertrash to Rubbertramp, you read me Rubbertramp?”

There was a click, then static, then silence.

“Did you just call someone?”

“Maybe. CB. No point in radio silence now, eh?”

“Who's Rubbertramp? I thought we were on our own?”

“Probably are. Zees was call signs; Rubbertramp, hees name Mondo. He settle here, but he not wanna no part in zee war. He donna like to fight.”

“A pacifist?”

“You could saya zat. But when pusa comma shove-a, he push-a with zee Autobots. He don't like-a war, but he can hold his own.”

“A draft-dodger. Great!”

“Eh, look, eeza beeg party inna Buenos Ares, everyone invited but me, Mondo, anna Butcher. Take-a whatchyoo get!”

“So is he coming?”

“We'll see!”

Snarl laid off, out of rounds or making repairs, but it was only a second before Butcher laid in again with his smaller guns. The nano-armor spread the force of a couple that took Terry in the shoulder and the back of the head, but he nearly blacked out just the same. Vision blocked by a rainbow-edged black blob, he fished a granola bar out of his bag and shoved it under the seat. “Here...” he slurred, “ya gadda keep goin'...”

“ _Grazi_ ,” said Pavi. “But I needa more volatiles. Mi rocketta gonna splutter any momento.”

“Hell...” Terry tried to run a mental inventory, but came up blank. They didn't have anything. But the sun was showing well on the horizon, and this wasn't the _most_ deserted highway in the world. Someone would come along soon, and Butcher would have to clam up and play nice. “Jus' keep goin'. It's all we got.”

Terry hung his head and held the gun tighter. It was just a little thing, but it had hurt Butcher before. When the jerk caught up (no _ifs_ about it) Terry would find a chink in his armor and empty the clip. If nothing else, he'd do a bit more damage before those clawed hamfists tore through his thin, fragile flesh.

“Uffa!” Shouted Pavi.

Terry looked up. There was a lump on the horizon, a black blob at the vanishing point of the highway, growing fast. Terry saw the headlights, smokestacks, high wind deflector, and his heart skipped a beat. “Pavi! Is that--”

“Eez not Optimus Prime. Just one-a yours, but zat works for me!”

No Christmas tree had ever inspired more joy than Terry felt seeing the truck's running lights rushing at them, bound back for Beatty. Pavi eked out a bit more speed to cross paths with it, then locked his breaks to swerve into the truck's wake. They'd shadow the truck, protected by the need for anonymity, all the way into Beatty. Terry looked back at Butcher and Snarl, laughter building--

\--then dying in his throat. Time slowed. Butcher should have clammed up, put on the disguise. Instead, as they reached the truck, Snarl climbed onto Butcher's saddle, shifting to dog-mode, and hurled herself at the cab of the eighteen-wheeler.

The first note of the air-horn cut off in mid-bellow. The driver jerked the truck right, left, right, jackknifed over smoking brakes. The truck folded at the joint, crashed over itself, and rolled, tumbling full-speed down the roadway, shrapnel flying. Snarl busted from the cab, leaping high over the wreck, trailing a red mist, and landed back in Butcher's saddle.

Pavi reacted faster than Terry, continuing his break-neck turn into a full donut, and punching it again, still the wrong way down the highway.

“Shiiiiiiit!”

“ _Merde merde merde! Carogna!_ ”

Hard as he tried, Pavi had lost too much speed. Butcher was on them in seconds, coming up along side. He unfolded an arm and swiped, but Pavi jerked away. Snarl bunched her legs to jump teeth-first into Terry. She laughed like a hyena, yellow eyes blazing bright, coiled to spring.

Terry didn't feel afraid. He found that odd. He wasn't scared, just really pissed off. Snarl jumped at him. Even in humanoid form, she had a dog-like face. Not companionable, but murderous. He aimed at her laughing, blood-streaked muzzle and fired, twice. He missed her open mouth, taking her in the chest and a lucky shot in the neck. The shots didn't have much stopping power, but she shrieked as they bored deep through her armor and exploded, little grenades sending diamond shrapnel into her torso and blowing out a chunk of her neck. Terry ducked low and she sailed over, scrabbling, raking her claws across his back and tumbling into the dirt. The armor didn't tear, but his skin did, in white-hot lines of agony.

Growling, Terry blinked through the pain and blasted away at Butcher, shot after brilliant shot into his side, hoping for a little more luck.

He hit something juicy. Bits of shrapnel flew out of Butcher's side, where a regular bike's engine would be. He lurched, roared, and lost speed, wobbling.

Pavi laughed. “Ha ha _stronzo_! _Tua madre si da per niente!_ ” They pulled ahead again, leaning into a curve as the highway wrapped around a hillside, skirting a deep gully, almost a canyon.

Terry twisted on his seat, taking a bead for one last shot. Butcher tumbled, then rose up in his humanoid form, cannon tracking them. Carrion swooped toward Butcher, flapping brokenly, limping on bent wings, and lit on his shoulder. Terry fired again. Butcher blocked the shots with the shield on his left arm – another form the side-car took. Carrion pointed at Terry with one crooked wing... No! She pointed past them, at the hillside, at boulders that had stood for thousands of years, eaten away by constant wind and infrequent rain.

“Pavi!” shouted Terry.

It turned out Butcher actually _could_ hit a target, if it wasn't moving. He opened up with everything he had left, blasting the ground out from under the ancient stones. A stampede of boulders crashed down on the road, on them. Pavi shifted, wrapping around Terry and tucking them into a roll as the world crashed and boomed around them. Terry couldn't keep up with it, with every bang and bump and wrenching jostle as they left the road and tumbled into the gully. Sunlight shimmered off shreds of the nanoarmor. Stones caromed off his helmet, or maybe his head caromed off the ground. Probably that. Butcher kept firing, letting loose with blast after blast, bringing the hillside down on them.

Terry screamed and screamed, but the sound just got louder. They stopped rolling, but the punches kept coming as the avalanche rained down on them and darkness took the sun.

  
  


  



	11. The Camp

Chapter  
11: The Camp

Miles away, near an old dirt road a ways off the beaten track, there were gypsies.

Campers, vans, trucks, buses and tents clustered around a handful of campfires. The place didn't have a name; it was just one of those things that happened. There had always been someone camping here, without interruption, for years. Rubbertramps, scootertrash, hippies, drifters, snowbirds, witches, gypsies and outcasts; all kinds came through The Camp.

There was always music, whether from speakers or fresh from the fingertips. There was always a little wine to be found, a little beer, a little this, that or the other. There was always one girl spinning, her skirts flaring a little too close to the fire... but she never fell, and the flames danced with her. And there was always veggie curry. The pot never emptied; they just kept throwing stuff in.

Out near the edge of the camp there was a little fire, still flickering even at the first touch of dawn. There were just a few occupants sharing the warmth.

Hayley and Shannon were lost in the sleep of young lovers, which was deep and smiley.

Langley snored like a bandsaw on a tin roof. No one minded.

Rupert was awake. He took a little swig and stared up at the stars. “There's gotta be something to it, man. Some universal connector. I mean, we have stupid dumbass wars. You do too. We make art and love to dance. You do too. It just can't be random.”

“Everything's a song, man, and all songs are one song,” said Mondo.

“Right! Right! That's what I'm sayin'! I mean, you got _mysteries_. You got _souls_! I don't care what the man says!” Rupert punctuated each sentence with a shake of his bottle.

“Damn the man.”

Rupert swigged. “Yeah, Eff'em.”

“Smorgasbordians carry pocket fulla spades!” said Camron.

Camron was technically awake, but his brain chemistry was temporarily such that he would not likely remember Rupert's conversation with Mondo. Or, if he did, he would not mind remembering Mondo as a giant robot, since he would also remember Rupert as a fez-wearing ferret hovering over a score of prayer-bowls.

Rupert swigged, then pressed on from his bully pulpit under the stars. “You guys are living things. You got soul. I _know_ you, and you are as precious to the creator as anyone. The church, trying t' condemn you. The man, tryin' t' use you... Hell, my _dog's_ got more soul than most of 'em, and he ain't got the brains of a paramecium.”

“Ruff!” said Camron. “Splittin' dogs, loaves and fishes! Ooohh...”

Mondo shook his head. “He gonna be all right?”

“Yeah, just groovin'. Let him ride.”

“Right on. Yeah, man, we got a lot more in common than people wanna say. Love, despair, ambition, hope. Some of us want change, some of us fear it. But we're all in on this cosmic movie, and-- uh,” Mondo's eyes dimmed as he listened to the voice on the wind. “Hold on a sec.”

_“_ _Scooter-trash to Rubbertramp. Scootertrash to Rubbertramp...”_

Mondo groovedin on the message, then came back to the world. “Whoa... heavy...” he said at last. “Man...”

Rupert cocked his head. “Trouble?”

“'Cable comin' in from above.' Got a friend in need. Not something he can talk his way out of, either.”

“Hmm... that _is_ trouble.”

Mondo rose, and blocked out a good bit of the horizon. “Friend in need is a friend indeed. Look, man,” he gestured apologetically, “I hate to bail. Wanted to get you all the way to the thing... But this is a pretty heavy situation, y'dig?”

“I know, Mondo. It's cool.” Rupert raised his bottle in blessing.

“You'll be able to find a ride?”

Rupert gestured to the softly snoozing camp. “At the Camp? No problemo! Half these hooligans are headin' to the festival anyway. Someone's always got room for one more.”

“Groovy. Well, adios! Krusty and Molly will miss ya!” Mondo's voice hitched a little. He tucked down into his vehicular form. Where other transformers would bear the familiar sigil of Autobot or Decepticon, Mondo's windscreen bore stickers of marching robotic teddy bears, a roboticized skull with a lightning bolt filling the cranium, and a chickenfoot picked out in an iridescent pink reminiscient of elowing energon.

Rupert pulled a stray grey lock behind his ear. “Adios, brother. See you 'round the bend!”

Mondo flickered his lights, and hit the road.

  
  


  



	12. Convoy

Chapter  
12: Convoy

Merl Braithwait leaned back in his seat and wriggled, trying to work loose a knot of tension the size of a backhoe that had parked between his shoulderblades. He scanned the line of the convoy ahead of his van, then down the road, off to the horizon. Something was going to happen, he knew. He could feel it. He checked the knobs of the radio for the twentieth time, making sure that it was on, that it was receiving, that the frequency was right, that he wasn't missing the chatter of guards spotting the enemy.

“They're quiet because there's nothing going on, Merl.”

He glanced over at Alisha, grateful to have her there. He always put up a tough front, but she knew how to read him after so many years working together. “I know. I'm just spooked.” After the foiled attack which had lost them two pilots, they were all edgy. But moving the artifact was the right thing, and there was no better time than _now_. Whatever the artifact was, the wrong robots wanted it, and all the important Autobots and NEST were tied up down south. So they'd dragooned a few of Yucca Mountain's guards to tag along while they smuggled the thing out of Nevada in their little convoy of boring, nondescript vehicles.

Alisha _tsk_ ed. “We've been on the road for two hours already, and nothing's happened. No way anyone knows who we are or what we have. And even if they find out, we're covered. So don't worry.”

The soldiers in the convoy were armed with ATF gear. They weren't the same caliber as Braithwait was used to working with. They were just young MPs, eyes wide with adventure, and scared stupid to boot. Braithwait had considered waiting, but with the recent attack, he'd decided that speed took priority. His call, and he hoped he'd made the right one.

The vehicles of the convoy – plain vans and SUVs – were armored. The last truck was pulling a trailer with a special party favor. They had learned to play the transformers' game – be powerful, be inconspicuous, stay alive.

A car came over the horizon. Braithwait's knuckles whitened until it had passed. “I'll feel better when we hit the interstate. Even then, I won't feel good till we've got it locked up deep and I'm miles away from it.”

Alisha crossed her arms. “I still think we should have left it at Yucca Mountain.”

He shook his head. “Wouldn't work.”

“It's secure.”

“Not enough. It couldn't stop a real assault, not against a big force, and the Decepticons have the big force. One guy was willing to try it on his own, so this thing must be important enough for them to throw their weight into getting it. More important than a bunch of radioactive junk. Twenty of them could break in, and the Decepticons have more than that. We have better places.”

“Aye-aye, Cap'n. I know it all, I just still disagree. I think we should beef up security and hold out for Prime to advise.”

“No way. This isn't going to Sector Seven or to the Autobots. Their refusal to share technology costs us lives.”

“We shouldn't even touch the thing, not after what it did to Larry. “

“You saw the same prelims I did. It has to be studied. If this thing can--”

_Crackle_. “Contact,” said a voice from the radio. Rasmunssen, in the lead car. At the same moment two unlabeled LEDs lit up in Braithwait's dashboard, glowing amber. A red one lit a blink later. Energon emissions detected.

“ Crap. You spoke too soon.”

Alisha grimaced and readied her weapon. Guards all along the convoy did the same, charging their hulking AMS-rails. They had to be ready. Moreso, they had to pray that the boring vehicles would work, and that they would go undetected.

Braithwait wasn't counting on it. Whatever the artifact was, it was putting out some strange signals - faint, but very distinct.

The highway disappeared over a rise ahead. One vehicle crested, heading toward them, then another. It was a handful of vehicles; a sedan, minivan, an old pickup, nothing special, just a few cars, clustered together the way highway traffic did. The teenaged driver of the pickup at the end of the line had his head stuck out the window, laughing and blowing his horn.

The radio squawked with the voice of the spotter in the lead vehicle. “Apparent Middle-eastern family in the lead sedan.”

Braithwait's knuckles tightened. “Apparent” had become a weighted word since the transformers arrived. You just never knew how far their disguises would go.

“Erg sig's right in the pack, but I don't see-- What the-- you joking?” The radio coughed with restrained laughter. “Check out the easy riders!”

The line drew nearer, the angle shifted, and Braithwait saw what was giving the teenager in the rusting truck and the soldiers at the head of his convoy such a case of the jollies. There was a motorcycle just ahead of the pickup, the riders wearing nothing but helmets, pale thighs and lush curves out for the world to see, bright smiles and hard nipples slicing the wind. A tall one and a thick one, both head-turners, laughing and waving.

“Son of a bitch!” Braithwait jabbed the call button. He should have waited for spec-ops soldiers to man the convoy, not appropriated these jokers. Male eyes were drawn to curves, to smooth rounded mounds which sloped down and down into promising crevices. Professionals wouldn't have been distracted a second. The meat-heads were getting their jollies, and Braithwait was the only one who looked at the other details. _He_ saw the rider's hands – crude steel clamps. _He_ noticed the bike itself; if it was man-made, it was a one-of-a-kind. Not likely.

“The bike! Target the bike! Open fire!”

“But--” The comm cut off.

Alisha hissed. “We're jammed!”

The monster cycle braked, rear-end slewing around, smashing through the minivan ahead of it like a grand-slam and sending it rolling into their convoy. The skin peeled back from the nude women, leaving skeletal caricatures of biker chicks, all blades and teeth and armor plating. The minivan bowled over the lead truck of the convoy, sending both tumbling. The followers swerved around the wreck and put on speed, passing the enemy – at least Braithwait's own DARPA drivers were competent. The enemy had timed its maneuver perfectly, turning a one-eighty, running the screaming teenager in the pickup off the road, just in time to come broadside with the convoy as they jerked around the wreck of the lead truck. The chunky one hopped down into the sidecar, which split into segments like a clockwork egg, muzzles protruding, tracking, firing. Cerulean energy pulses whipped out, punching through armor and soldier alike. The bike let out an omni-directional EMP blast, a serious power drain, but worth it for the number it did on their communications.

“Fire damn it!” Braithwait screamed at the dashboard mike. “Fire fire fire!” Less than a second of distraction, of hesitation cost him the two lead vehicles. The windows of the third blasted outward as the guards aboard finally opened fire. Smart rounds pounded the beast. Explosions blistered all over it. The gunner bot cowered low in her turret, unable to fire. The thin one dropped left, clinging to the side of the bike, letting it take the brunt of the firepower. The silent bike roared, vocally, in pain and rage. Segments in its fenders snapped open, and it unleashed a volley of half a dozen mini rockets, twirling up like Medusa on a bad hair day, then jerking course and hammering down on the convoy. The fat little gunner-bot opened up with her cluster of energy cannons. The third guard truck blew apart, soldiers and some of Braithwait's own physicists gone in a flaming, tumbling assortment of shrapnel. A couple more rockets detonated on the roof of the next vehicle, the van holding the artifact, but its armor held.

Braithwait jabbed the radio, but heard nothing but static; the EMP had totally fried it. He tapped the horn three times, the backup signal for the last truck to open its trailer. Charges blew off the roof and walls and a stalker drone stood up, feet clamped to the bed of the trailer.

“Hold on,” said Braithwait. The enemy slowed again, dropping back abreast of the van ahead of them. Braithwait refused to let them have the artifact, not if it could do what they thought possible. This was bigger than the Iceman, the cube, bigger than the portals, bigger than any of the other litter the transformers had ever left on their planet. He swerved into the other lane and floored it, coming up hard behind the enemy. Alisha leaned out her window and snapped off a few shots. Her pistol held a weaker, black-powder version of the smart rounds. The two smaller bots turned at the sound of their approach, and the fat one got an eye blown out for her trouble. The tall one screamed her banshee scream and blasted back with something that looked like a small bazooka. Her own explosive rounds stitched across the windshield, spiderwebbing but not shattering the armored glass.

Braithwait hauled Alisha back in by her belt and didn't let up on the gas. Driving by instinct and feel, he jerked right, then cut left hard, snagging the rear of the bike with his left bumper and spinning it off the road. 

“Eat that!” he shouted, hauling on the wheel, keeping the van on the road by force of will. He loved this. In the age of transformers, DARPA wasn't just the home for geeks in uniform; it was where geeks learned how to play rough. The enemy would get back on the road, he had no doubt, but they would be behind the convoy now, driving right up into the face of the stalker and its heavy ATF cannons. “We got them now!” Grinning, he turned to Alisha, and froze, dunked into a vat of rival emotions so strong he just went numb. The windshield had stopped Carrion's shots... but Alisha had been leaning out the window.

Part of him knew he had to look ahead, had to drive, but he couldn't stop himself from staring, trying and trying but not finding her familiar face.

Somewhere to his left, metal tore into metal. The guard in the seat behind him started firing, shouting. Merl Braithwait looked left, into the eyes of Carrion.

  
  


  



	13. Down, Not Out

Chapter  
13: Down, Not Out

The earth moved. All Terry wanted was the stillness, for the quiet to go on and on, but the earth moved above him, stone growling and sand hissing. The sounds made him think, and thinking awoke the other senses.

And they all hurt.

He groaned.

Everything around him shifted, rocking back and forth, and he put a few details together. Pavi had shielded him in the tumble, and the robot was still wrapped around him. The bot moved, worming to shove off the debris. The scraping feeling on his back was Pavi's gaudy letter “P” medallion grinding against his spine. That whirring noise was Pavi's blades, snicking in and out pulverizing stone. That blinding pain in his side was one of the robot's handlebars jabbing him every time Pavi shifted from side-to-side.

“Pavi!”

“Hrrrnnngh!” Pavi shifted, heaving, the handlebar digging deeper into Terry's side, but the robot didn't let up.

“PAVI!!!”

“Err-rnnngh!” With a final heave, Pavi shoved off a pile of rocks and sunlight blinded them. The robot shoved and chopped and punched the debris around them. Terry threw his weight in, once he got an arm free. They crawled, sore and exhausted and bleeding, up to the buried roadway.

Terry collapsed on the ground and took stock. As Pavi had cradled him, he'd curled around the gun. He couldn't recall thinking to do that, wasn't sure if any thinking had really happened during the avalanche. The gun was whole, but the clip was almost empty. There was blood here and there, maybe something was broken, maybe not; he couldn't tell with everything hurting so much. He still had Pavi's helmet on, all dented and bashed. One of Butcher's slugs was still embedded on the backside. The nanomaterial armor was in shreds, though. Even it had its limits, it seemed. Gnarled tatters of it clung all over, woven through the fabric of his clothes, warped and hardened so that it pulled the fabric tight. Jagged edges of it were nestled in uncomfortable places.

“Terry, is you A-O-K?” The bot looked him over. Pavi's head twitched, and he thumped it with a finger.

“Um... no, but I'll live. I think I...” he wanted to stand, but it didn't work. His face went pale. “I can't move my leg! I--” He looked down and caught his breath. His whole leg was encased in hardened nanomaterial.

Pavi leaned over, two fingers out, a little arc of electricity between his fingertips. At his touch, the mass of nanomaterial collapsed into fine dust, like coal powder. “Zee right voltage scramble zem. Waste of good nanomaterial, but we gotta no time to fix.” He zapped a few of the bigger masses of locked material.

Terry rubbed at his neck, which only reminded him how many other parts needed a good masseuse. “We got somewhere to rush off to?”

If a robot can set his jaw, then Pavi set his with an epic level of petulant defiance. “Donna even joke. Dat _carogna_ and heez _fiche_ eez _not_ getting zee QRT. I don givva cuppa _merde_. Even eef eet killa me, Butcher's a-gonna die.” Again, Pavi slapped the side of his twitching noggin.

“ You know,” said Terry, not believing he was saying this, but agreeing all the way, “You know, you're right. We gotta get that jerk off my highways.” He grabbed a piece of rubble off the road and lobbed it into the gully. “How am I ever gonna ride with these roads all tore up like this?”

Pavi stuck his chin out further and shook his fist. “Let's get zem forra good, eh! _Nessuno me lo ficca in culo!_ ”

Terry stood. “I don't know Italian, but I think I get your drift.” He held out his hand and hauled Pavi to his feet.

The robot was able to gyro-balance on his wheels, usually. He tried to now, and landed on his ass like a rookie at a roller-rink. “ _Porca puttana!_ ”

“Whoa. Are _you_ okay?” Terry pulled the robot up again, slowly, not so quick to let go this time.

Pavi jerked and wobbled, almost brought them both down, then finally extended his strut-like toes and heels. “Uffa. Terry, eez no good.” He took a halting step, arms out, toes extending to meet the ground. He seemed to be okay, walking normally, but when he reeled his toes in just a little, he started to wobble. “Zee rocks, dey knock out mi gyros. I gotta no balance!”

Terry scowled. “So what you're saying is...”

Pavi squeezed his head. “I canna roll!” He stomped in a circle, heavier on his feet than Terry had ever seen him. “Weesa sunk! No way we can catcha Butcher now!”

“You can't keep yourself upright?”

“No! _Mamma mia!_ Why now? Someone gotta evil eye onna Pavi! Eez no time to repaira zees, and eez no-one else here to stop zem! Zee 'Ceptics eez gonna--”

Terry slapped him, and almost broke his fingers. Pavi didn't even flinch.

“\--getta zee QRT é... é I dunno. Transforma ze world if eet works, mebbe unmake it if zee quantum backlash precipitate-a self-propogating--”

Terry slapped him again, with the helmet. Pavi staggered back, speechless for a moment. It was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, and Terry didn't let it pass him by. “Shift.”

“Eh?” Pavi blinked.

“Shift. _Now_ _!_ ”

Pavi did. Terry grabbed his handle bars before he fell over and set his kickstand, then stooped in front of the headlight. Terry had just about run out of terror. Something else was filling fear's place inside him, like drops of steel coursing through his veins. “Listen to me. We're not letting that asshole get away without a fight. Two-wheelers have been running around this planet at stoopid-high speed without self-balancing for a long time.” He swung up into the saddle. “All they need is a good rider.” He squeezed the right lever. “Rear brake. Front. Throttle. You feel these?” He squeezed and twisted the various controls in turn.

Pavi gulped. 'Si. Eeza leetle intimate.”

Terry shuddered. “Ugh. Anyway. If you want this to work, you're going to have to listen to my signals, brake when I want you to brake, throttle when I throttle, and let me steer and balance.”

“I dunno about zees...”

Terry rushed on. He had to get them moving, before all his old fears got the best of him. “I do. Unless you got any other ideas?” He looked down at the kick-starter; it didn't serve any real function for Pavi. “Okay, the kickstarter will be on/off for the thrusters. Got it?”

The scooter shrugged under him. “No thrusters left. Outta juice. I needa more-a volatiles forra rocketta fuel.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

Pavi Told him.

Terry considered the route they'd have to take to catch up with the convoy, and what was on the way. “No problem.”

+++++

Braithwait's maneuver caught Butcher by surprise, but he bulled back onto the road in moments, roaring. Those moments had cost them. He'd felt the presence of the Quantum Resonance Tuner, like the spark of a powerful Prime... but different. It wasn't just a single spark he felt, but an endlessly propogating whisper of souls-to-be. There was also something like energon present, but it too was different, modulated to an unheard-of frequency. It had been right next to him, almost within his grasp, when the human ran him off the road and the convoy passed them by.

He surged power to his drive train, tearing up the road. Carrion landed back in the saddle, dripping with Braithwait's and the guards' blood. “Cleared them out,” she said. “Not too many rodents left ahead.”

“That was quick,” said Snarl. “You didn't want to seduce any of them this time?”

“Clamp it, mutt.”

“Kiss my chrome ass, twat-lips!”

“Both of you bitches shut up!” rumbled Butcher. They accelerated, catching up to the convoy, which was now racing well beyond the speed limit. “We're ending this now. Snarl, prime 'em.”

Snarl grabbed the fire controls. The cluster of cannons whined and glowed. Two spat sparks and died, but the rest were ready to go. “Ready!” She peered ahead, and her eyes flashed. “Butcher!”

“I see it!”

The Stalker fired its big muzzle-mounted rail cannon. Butcher jinked right, barely saving Carrion from explosive decapitation.

“Nail it!”

“I'm on it!” Snarl took a bead on the ridiculous meatling contraption – not even a robot, barely more intelligent than a rat compared to a transformer, strapped to a trailer behind a truck.

Before Snarl opened up, the Stalker fired again – dead-on this time. The big slug bored into her cannon cluster and blew it apart. Bits of shrapnel peppered Butcher and his two minions.

“PRIMES DAMN IT!” Butcher roared, shuddering at the pain. He loosed another flight of rockets – his last – and dropped speed, zig-zagging as the drone took a few more shots at them. The thing's own anti-ballistics shielded the convoy from the rockets.

“Carrion! Hack that meatling puppet! Where's the meat-bag controller?”

She ducked low to Butcher's chassis and her eyes dimmed as she drew inward. “On it.”

  
  


  



	14. Drag Race

Chapter  
14: Drag Race

Nick's Fine Liqour and Snacks was a gas station at the cross-roads of an old highway and a gravel road that probably used to be a game trail. It was about twenty miles from anywhere, except Mack's Hog Shop, across the highway. Nick had spent years slowly dying, falling apart alongside his business, until Mack moved in, bringing in road hogs by the truckful. It had been just in time for Nick to pull the pistol out of his mouth and start stocking booze and artery-cloggers.

Mornings were usually quiet around here, so Nick's eyes widened under bushy brows when something like an avalanche came rushing up the gravel road. Nothing ever came up the old road but coyotes. He loosened the shotgun under the counter.

Terry veered off the gravel road at over a hundred and hit the brakes as soon as Pavi's wheels hit pavement. It didn't seem to help.

“Brake!” He pumped the lever. The old gas pumps were getting too close, too fast. “BRAKE!!!”

Pavi took over, locking his wheels, leaning right as his tail-end swung left, dropping his arm to claw the pavement, sliding into place right next to the pump. Their bow-wake of dust and gravel caught up, washing over them. Pavi used the cover to fold his arm back into his chassis.

He whistled. “Toodaloo. Just a regular scooter, donna pay me no mind!”

“Stop that!” Terry kept his hands on the handles; that was the only thing keeping him from collapsing with the shakes. “Well, that wasn't so bad. But you gotta work on your response time.”

“Eez scary, lettina you balance me. And you so naggy, every second front brake, back brake, throttle down, lean, tappa brakes, beeeg brake, throttle up, lean lean lean!”

“We were going over a hundred on _gravel_ _._ It's a delicate balance of forces! It takes split-second instincts!”

“ _Papparazzi!_ You tweaka mi bits like-a fumbling schoolboy!”

“Your analogies are really starting to creep me out.” The dust settled. Terry stood and, shockingly, stayed standing. “Okay, play it cool. I'll get us some grub.”

Nick scowled as Terry came in, then recognized him. His arm relaxed, letting go of his sawed-off. “You okay Ter?”

“Yeah... never better.” He grabbed his stuff and dumped it on the counter.

“Little early to be tying one on, isn't it kid?”

“Been a rough night, and it ain't quite over.”

“Been a lotta commotion up on yer Mountain lately. Thought those damn new jets were supposed to be quiet.”

Terry snorted. “Not when they're fightin'.”

He paid for breakfast and five bucks of gas and was almost out the door when a cathcer's mitt of a hand clapped on his shoulder. “Damn Terry! Yer up early!”

Mack was a big man, with a long, thick grey ponytail and arms meant for sleeveless Harley T's.

Terry looked up at him, managing a half-grin. “Ain't really been to bed. Gotta go.”

Mack laughed and followed him out the door. “Well, you look like hell. And hey, just cuz you didn't appreciate that POS scooter, you didn't have to hide it behind my--” He stopped, seeing the scooter in question sitting at the gas pump, looking much worse for wear. “What the--”

Terry handed him the bag of groceries. “Hold this.” He lifted the saddle and pumped in a gallon.

“Terry, what the hell's up?”

“Way too much for my tastes.” He pulled the bottle of whiskey out of the bag and twisted it open.

Mack looked from Pavi to his shop across the highway. “How the hell'd you-- uhhh... sure?” Mack took a swig, then passed the bottle back. Terry took a few long pulls himself. Mack hissed, “Gyyeahh, that's rough. But how the hell'd you--”

Terry up-ended the rest of the whiskey into the gas tank.

Mack blanched. “Hey!” Mack tried to stop him, but was encumbered by Terry's bag of groceries. Terry just smiled and rooted in the bag. He knocked the bottle away from the gas tank, closed the seat, and fished a lukewarm egg sandwich from the bag. “Thanks man.” He took a few swigs of coffee and opened the saddle again. This time, instead of a gas tank, there was a whirling vortex of blades. Terry up-ended the grocery bag and the rest of the coffee into Pavi's gullet, saddled up, and clapped Mack on the shoulder.

The poor guy looked like a sheet.

“You're a good man, Mack. If I don't come back, you can have my bike.” He throttled, the scooter rumbled like a hog twice it's size, and jumped out onto the highway.

Mack would have sworn he heard someone shout, “Ciao!”

Terry didn't say things like “Ciao!”

+++++

Breaking 100 wasn't quite so bad on a paved highway, even if the old road wasn't in the best shape. It had taken the first couple of miles on the back-roads for Pavi to fully disengage his befuddled equilibrium systems. Once he'd managed that, the adventure had toned down to a mere skin-of-your-teeth, life-and-death struggle with physics. Now, with cracked, buckled, but generally smooth pavement underwheel, it was a walk in the park. Terry knew these roads; a few miles ahead they'd swing onto another road, new enough it still had painted lines. Twenty miles after that and they'd crest a ridge and cross paths with the southbound highway, the only road the convoy could really be taking out of here. Twenty minutes tops. Half that if Pavi could get his rockets firing.

Terry finished off the egg sandwich, licked his fingers and said, “How's the brew comin'?”

“Uffa! Mano, I feelin' funky.”

“K, funk-style, can you light 'em up?”

“Wha'd you put inna mi?”

“Rocket fuel, I hope. Gas, Jack, jerky, couple boxes of pizza bites, and a little java for a kick, grounds and all. Hope that does the trick.”

“Si, eez burblin' up, but somma zees other stuffa... Uuuurrrrrrr...”

“Guts of steel, Pavi. Man up, it's your time to shine!”

“...Uuuurrrrrp! Hoi mano, when zees eez done, Imma hafta shove a hose way up my--”

“Nu-huh!” Terry stomped the kick-starter. “I don't wanna hear it.”

The cargo box split open, panels swinging out to form angled vector deflectors. Pavi lit his rockets, and the world seemed to stretch for Terry. He hunkered down, streamlining as best he could, not so much for speed as to keep the windshear from ripping him off as they climbed to 120... 135... 150 and still going. He kept his eyes locked on the vanishing point of the highway. On two wheels, you go where you look, and they couldn't risk any deviations at this speed.

Fear made its way back into his mind. He hadn't gone this fast in a long time, except with Pavi driving. But Terry was in control now. His show, his responsibility. The last time taken on something like this, he'd killed a man. And they were going to go faster.

_What was I thinking? I can't do this!_

He wondered which had been the worse idea – the coffee or the swigs of Jack? He was trembling. They veered a little. He corrected, instantly afraid of over-correcting. No way he could handle this! He was going to kill them both, and what good would that do?

“ Terry, whatta you doin'?”

Breathing heavy, he brought them back on the straight after a couple of wobbles, each one a loogie in Death's eye. “Pavi, we gotta slow down.”

“Seconds count! No way!”

“Use your radio! Call the Army!”

“I woulda done zat by now! Radio's busted! We're it!”

Terry Stomped the kick-starter and squeezed the brakes, but they weren't real controls. Pavi wouldn't listen. His fidgeting screwed with their balance again.

“Stop zat, _carogna!_ Zees was you idea, and eez ze only good one. I drive, you steer. I don't slow down 'till I gotta Butcher in my sights.”

“I... I can't...” He kept seeing images, ghosts of Perotti hovering in his periphery every time they swayed. “I can't do this Pavi. I--”

“YOU MAN UP, MAMMA'S BOY! Iffa you kill us on zees stupid road, Imma kicka you asshole outta you belly button! Carrion try ta bite offa you canolli, zee bitches gutted you domi, and you gonna just back away like a sissy? Pull uppa you balls and keep us onna zees road!”

“Craaaaaap...” Terry squeezed the word out through clenched teeth. Pavi was right. He'd screwed up bad, wrecked his career, and crawled into a hole for years. Now Angelina had come along, played him like a freakin kazoo (give it a blow and it'll sing for you) and he was ready to do it again.

_So I've got a threshold? When the going gets rough I get gone? I'm that kind of guy?_

Yeah, he was. But he didn't want to be.

_I know what I need to do. Am I afraid enough of dyin' to back out, let others die?_

_Sunwing had been; now she went by Carrion, and let Butcher hold her leash._

_One thing's damn sure; I don't wanna be anything like_ _her._

Terry opened his eyes, locked them back on the horizon. “You're right, asshole.” He settled his hands on the grips. “Our turn's comin up fast.”

They compromised on the turn, slowing down to a mere 120 through the curve. Pavi vectored the thrust of his rocket to keep the rear wheel firmly on the ground and tighten the turn without slowing too much. Terry was sure he felt something vital drop out of the pit of his stomach. Nonetheless, he stomped the kickstarter when they straightened out, and Pavi's rockets kicked them up to 200 in no time flat.

Terry tried to let out an exultant war whoop, but it came out as a strangled “Hurruuunnnngh...”

“ You okay meatball?”

“Next time we do this,” he growled, “I'm wearing a pressure suit.” Between the wind and the gees and the Jack, Terry had to punch each word out through clenched teeth. “So whadda we do... when we catch them?”

Pavi chuckled. “You wanna plan? We donna even know what we'sa gettin' into. You see zee bitches, starta shootin, no?”

“I only got two shots left.”

“Aim good.”

“Yeah. You ready for the fight?”

“I gotta few shots left.”

“That won't phase these guys much.”

“Si. Maybe I just jump onna Butcher é go kaboom!”

“I don't even know if that'd do the tough sumbitch in.”

“Who-o-o Terry, you donna know what you breakfast gotta brewing inna mi guts. Watch zee road!”

Terry brought his focus back to the task at hand. He really couldn't spare any distractions now. They say “Life comes at you fast.” Well, that takes on a whole new meaning on the back of a self-aware, rocket-powered scooter that has lost the ability to steer and has put its fate in your hands.

A light bloomed far ahead on the road. For a moment Terry feared another ambush by Snarl, but then he made out the bulk of a larger vehicle, with a boxy profile. 

“Damn after-market lights.”

Terry squinted, trying to make out the details through the glare of those impossibly bright taillights. He wanted to see what kind of vehicle this was, traveling this little-used road this early. He meant to wave the driver to pull off, keep away from the danger ahead, just as soon as they passed.

_Just as soon as we pass..._

_Any minute now..._

_Just as soon as..._

Terry blinked. _We aren't gaining. Just how fast is that thing going?_ “Umm... Pavi?”

“ Si! Haha! Watcha dis Meatball!” Pavi's headlight lit up to an actinic blue-white glare, and flickered in a stacatto code. The other vehicle's lights flickered in response, then the bright lights – _rockets,_ Terry realized – winked out. In a flash the vehicle dropped at least 80mph and – relatively speaking – came at them like a polychromatic battering ram.

“Sonofa!” Terry jinked into the other lane, barely missing a rainbow collision.

A voice sang “Du-da—da-da-DAH—DAH!!!” as the vehicle zizzed by them... or they zizzed by it, depending on your reference. 

However you looked at it, Terry saw a mottled blur in primary colors.

“Wazzat flowers?” he asked.

Pavi chuckled and dropped back, matching speed. The other vehicle was a van, a vintage hippie-mobile complete with curtained camper-roof, incense sticks in every window and flowers, stars and birdies spangled on its side in the whole spectrum. There were two occupants on the front bench.

“Du-da—da-da-DAH—DAH! Duh-dah—da-da-DAH!!! “ Boomed the singing voice through the speakers in Terry's helmet. Terry recognized Wagner's _Ride of the Valkyries_. “I love the smella energon in the mornin'! Hey-hey Noodles! Since when d'you let the Man drive ya around?”

“ Eez only temporary. Thissa Terry, he's on ze level.”

“Faaaar out!” said the van.

Terry squinted. There weren't any occupants up front after all. Just a... a... He groaned. “Is that a Bozo Bop Bag driving?”

“Special edition Krusty version!” crooned the hippie van. “And that's a vintage Molly Bigmuff ridin' shotgun! Only slightly used. The kids are crazy about each other!”

Terry sighed. “You must be Mondo.”

“Hey, chill it, don't spill it!”

“What does that even mean?” asked Terry.

“No clue, hombre. Dig it! So what's shakin', Noodles?”

“Eez Butcher é heez Bitches. Humans founda zee QRT. He gonna take it.”

Mondo slowed a bit. “Whoa. Heavy. We shoulda found a better stash-spot than Mama Terra, man.”

Terry snorted. “That's what I said!”

“So why the hubbub? Let 'em have it. It's all a cosmic movie anyway. Nothing really matters. See, if more people could just dig into that groove, we wouldn't have to--”

“Mondo! Iffa QRT works, Butcher gonna get power beyonda zee Primas!”

“Oh... Double-heavy. Well, maybe it won't work?”

“Zen zee QRT will turn off zee cosmic movie, and burn zee film.”

“Whoa...”

“Also,” said Terry, “He's a misogynistic aggressor. Dig it?”

“Right-on. I can jive with that. Let's break his face! I'm trackin' a frequency void ahead, bookin' like sexwax on a skillet. Betcha a truckload a patchoulli that's the jerk-off on the move!”

“We'll lead zee way. Trya keep up, Pinko!” Pavi punched up the rockets again, and they launched ahead of the van.

Mondo lit his own burners with a cry of “Burn one down!”

  
  


  



	15. Battlefield

Chapter  
15: Battlefield

They climbed the on-ramp and barely missed wiping out on the smoking hulk of one of the DARPA SUVs. There was blood on the cratered asphalt. A screaming mother clawed at the door of her overturned car. A dazed teenager stared at his phone, shaking it with bloodied hands. Blackened shrapnel of vehicles and bodies littered the road like a trail of crumbs, choking Terry with the stench. The highway looked like the Blues Brothers had tangled with Mad Max, with the DOD's budget to blow on munitions. 

Mondo wove through the wreckage, singing. There had to be room in his guts for a stereo system, but the hippie preferred singing, even the musical parts. “Buuh—NUNH-nuh--nuh-na-na NUNH-nuh--nuh-na-na/ Five to one, baby/ One in five...” he passed a flaming minivan. “No one here gets/ Out alive...”

“I see him!” said Pavi.

Terry squinted ahead, searching. Pavi's “headlight” telescoped, and the transformer fed the zoomed image right to Terry's goggles. Without warning Butcher appeared right in front of him.

“Holy shiiiiiii--!” Terry came close to wrecking them before he realized it was an image. “You wanna warn me before you do that!”

“ _Scuzzi_. But look!”

In the zoomed image, Butcher evaded shots. He was following about half a mile behind the convoy, being held off by a Stalker drone on a flatbed.

“ Never thought I'd see that one.”

“You meatball-drone's OK. Butcher's a-bleedin'.”

“Little dog-brained mech's hangin' ten and layin' waste!” shouted Mondo.

Terry cheered. Butcher revved closer to the drone. The stalker took another bead, and almost nailed the Decepticon. Butcher partially shifted, barrel-rolled, and dropped back, unable to close the distance. Terry liked the look of this; sooner or later the stalker would nail him for sure. Terry had no qualms about being just a witness at this party after all.

Then, as he watched, Carrion leaped from the saddle, sprouting wings and stooping to strike.

+++++

Carrion was a smart one, quick to map out, understand, and manipulate complex systems. Human culture, electronic networks, bureaucracies, she could twist them all to her needs. The only one she couldn't twist was Butcher – not with the energon shunt he'd planted on her core. The dim brute had bested her with that, and all her cunning had failed to cut her loose. She'd spent years doing his bidding, biding her time, losing herself.

She took to the air now, having solved the puzzle. Humans were smart; they knew they'd be facing an enemy who could jam their signals, so they couldn't rely on a wireless link to control their drone.

She arched high, dropping flash-bombs to dazzle the Stalker as she passed overhead.

They had to rely on a hard-line link between the pilot and the Stalker. Which meant the pilot was right there, in the vehicle towing the drone.

Humans were smart, but humans were dumb. So were their weapons.

She swooped down, talons out, and smashed into the truck's window. It cracked, but held – armored glass – but she got a claw-hold on the speeding truck and pried the door open. A spray of needles dispatched the guard inside before he could fire, then she slithered in. There was nothing she could do to sever Butcher's control over her, but at least there were plenty of meatlings around for her to exercise her frustrations on. 

The drone pilot sat in the back seat, a portable control console on his lap, a visor blocking his eyes and ears. He was sweating, so trapped up in the drone's perspective that he didn't hear her crawl in next to him, didn't hear the driver shouting at her.

Gently, Carrion lifted the visor from the man's face, so he could see her smile. Then she shot a few molecule-thin wires of nanomaterial through his chest, surrounding his heart, and twisted them tight.

+++++

Butcher throttled forward the instant the pilot died. The drone had some autonomy, but was slowed and disoriented by the sudden loss of input from its pilot. Butcher shifted, leaping upward, hacking through the snout-turret. The drone fired its main cannon once, impotently, into the air. Butcher stood on the trailer, wrestling the pitiful human puppet machine. With hook and cleaver he pried open its armor, aimed his shoulder-cannon into the gap, and fried its brain with a point-blank shot. He dumped the drone and jumped onto the SUV, then onto the road ahead, shifting in mid-leap. Carrion smashed her way out of the windshield, trailing bits of the driver, and landed back in the saddle. Driverless and dragging the carcass of the drone, the SUV swerved, flipped, and broke apart across the desert.

“Now,” said Butcher, gunning for the last vehicle, the van holding the QRT. “It's _MINE!_ ”

+++++

Terry groaned as Butcher sank his claws into the white van and brought it down like a wildcat tackling a panicked wildebeast.

Terry ended the zoomed image; they were still almost a mile distant.

He bent low over the shaking handlebars. His arms were burning with the effort of keeping the rocket-powered scooter on course, but he wasn't going to falter. Even surrounded by carnage, he didn't want to quit. He didn't know where this anger was coming from, but he wanted to ride it as long as he could. He bent low over the handlebars. “Pavi, if you've got any more speed left in you, now's the time.”

“Mama's special comin' up!” Pavi unfolded his arms and grabbed Terry's ankles. The floorboard below his feet stretched out, the front panel of the scooter leaning back.

“What the--”

“Hold on Terry! Steer-a me good!”

As Pavi shifted, stretching out, Terry was pulled into a more prone position. The scooter reconfigured to something more like a two-wheeled louge board, a sleek dart riding a rocket booster. Terry tapped his reserves, quieting and steeling his mind, pushing every ounce of concentration into reading the road, balancing the tug of gravity and wind resistance, stillness and reflex. The wrong twitch could send them off the road, but damn if he hadn't felt this alive since that last drag race. He was entering a quiet place, a calm zone he'd always chased, but never quite reached on the back of his own cruiser. The closest he'd ever come had been in the blazing quarter-miles of his youth. But now he found it, lost himself in a zone of total, detached perfection, inches above the meat-grinder asphalt, way beyond the intended speed of the human body.

He pointed them right at Butcher. He didn't worry how he'd survive the impact; he just wanted to give Pavi the chance to ice the bastard.

Too late.

Butcher hacked open the van, tossing the occupants aside for Snarl and Carrion to finish off, and lifted the gleaming crystalline crate over his head. He roared.

Pavi slowed. “He has it. Terry, we too la--”

“No!” Steering one-handed, Terry jerked the gun out of his belt. He leveled the barrel on the windscreen and charged a shot. “You're not quitting on me, Pavi!” He centered his thoughts in the quiet zone, all distraction aside, and fired one breathless shot. The smart round caught the gleaming crate dead-center and exploded, knocking the box out of Butcher's hands.

Mondo shot past them, revving up even as Pavi slowed. “They got the guns, but/ we got the numbers,” he sang, “Gonna win, yeah, We're/ takin' over/ COME ON!” The polychromatic hippie van jumped up, splitting open, shifting into his humanoid form, taking Butcher with a flying tackle.

Butcher was a big hog, but Mondo was a van. Pound-for-pound, the beatnik had the pig out-classed. Mondo landed on his feet, pirouetted, and hurled Butcher two-fisted off the road. “Up yours, pig!” In his robotic form Mondo was tall and lanky, with flowing locks of sparking cables, burly arms formed out of the camper-top, and the vibrantly-painted side panels curled around his calves like bellbottoms. He wore a necklace of fist-sized wooden beads that dangled down to his waist. A light shone behind the windshield on his chest, glowing around the deflated faces of Krusty and Molly Bigmuff; a energon core, shining with alien energy.

“C'mon, dude!” Spikes sprouted from Mondo's knuckles. “Let's hug it out, man.”

Terry steered them around the face-off just as Butcher hurled himself at Mondo. _Let the monsters tango_ , he thought. _The real goal's in sight._ “Pavi!” He aimed for the crystalline crate and squeezed the brakes. “Slow down!”

He didn't want to break his arms off grabbing the thing.

_+++++_

Snarl bunched up and hurled herself into the fray at Butcher's side.Carrion crouched in humanoid form, bunching to follow the dog leaping into battle. But she hesitated, looking down the road, realizing the opportunity at hand. Butcher was distracted by the brawling clown, and the QRT was lying unguarded on the road. If ever there was a chance, this was it.

_Let Snarl yap at his ankles. I'm through being his lapdog._

She leaped into the air, and shifted.

+++++

Terry heaved the crate up. It was small, but weighed like it was full of vinyl albums and ammo crates. The crate was made of a faintly pinkish-purple material, with beveled edges and alien writing etched in curving lines. It was crystalline, but not crystal. The stuff was warm, and glowed. The color showed most distinctly at the edges, and along the ridges and grooves of the writing. There was a dent on one side, a warped and fractured crater where he had shot the box.

Terry trembled at the thought. _A box full of an unknown alien device which may or may not have the power of detangling the stuff of the universe... and I shot it._

Flickers of light crawled over the damage like ants, repairing it.

_Good trait for a safe._

He peered through the transparent walls of the crate and got his first good look at the object they were all fighting for. The word “object” wasn't necessarily right. It could be seen, it had something like limits to size, but looking at one edge made the other seem to stretch off infinitely past the periphery. The thing had lobes and coils which shifted and writhed, growing and collapsing around a single point. The closer he looked, the more minutely he saw the same patterns repeating, smaller and smaller, worlds within worlds. Just looking at it made him want to fall in, lose himself in the vastness. 

It also kind of made him want to puke. 

Terry recognized what he was seeing; he'd seen it as a kid, a wild design blazoned on one of his homework folders. It was a fractal, given real dimensions. Well, not dimensions – size lost all meaning when you looked at it – but limits. Temporary, meaningless limits. It was hourglass shaped, and could happily inhabit the space of a basketball...

A basketball which were bigger on the inside than on the outside.

Terry scrunched his eyes, trying to not think about the mindbending physics, and turned to Pavi. “Got it. Shift back.”

“ Zen what?”

“Zen... then we run like hell.”

“Oh. Si.”

A wounded goddess dropped to the earth right between them. Angelina, nude, radiant, more alluring and lush than Terry had ever imagined. But there were gashes across her shoulder, belly and hip, showing the skeletal structure within. Nanomachines worked furiously at the edges of the tears, glowing like embers. She smiled, the long scar that cut over her left eye and across her mouth flexing and splitting wider. “Ooh Terry, miss me? I'd hoped to get much closer.” She put a hand on his shoulder - a crude clamp in place of the claw Pavi had mangled – and squeezed. “As close as the two of us could get.”

Terry's knees buckled at the pain.

“Hands offa mi _fratello, donnaccia!_ ” Pavi raked his blades across Carrion's back. 

She screamed at the affront, twisted, and caught his jaw with a wicked round-house kick that sent him flying. “Soul-less freak! I'm tired of you getting in my way!” Her skin peeled back, and her blades and talons popped out. She dropped Terry like a candy wrapper and jumped on Pavi.

Pavi caught her with one hand and foot, mangled her face a bit, and kicked her off. “And Imma tireda you being sucha dirty bitch!” He sprang to his feet. He wobbled a little without his delicate balancing systems, but threw himself at her just the same.

It was like watching a rat that wouldn't stop attacking an alleycat. They were both hurt, but Carrion was longer, leaner, stronger and meaner. Pavi scored a few solid blows, pissing her off more than hurting her, while she dealt some serious damage, mangling his shoulder, stabbing him through the thigh, biting through the wrist of his blade-hand. Terry couldn't help but understand just how sorely the transformers outclassed the humans. He wanted to help Pavi, but he was all soft flesh, and that fight was a whirlwind of steel and spikes. Maybe if his own nano-armor was still functional, but...

_Screw it!_ He had the gun, with one shot left, and he still had Pavi's helmet. If that was all he had going for him, then so be it.

Pavi swore and kicked Carrion back a few steps.

Seeing his opening, Terry ducked low and charged in head-first.

  
  


  



	16. War Song

Chapter  
16: War Song

Butcher dented Mondo's armor a little with his first strike, but the brightly-painted robot was a pretty good fighter for a pacifist. Mondo was built as a front-line brawler, spent years as an escort and guard before turning his back in disgust at the civil war, but centuries of conscientious objectioning hadn't dulled his core programming. He caught Butcher's hook on his thick forearm, sidestepped the chopping cleaver, and delivered a gut-punch that sent Butcher staggering. Snarl jumped for his midriff, but he slapped the dog aside.

Mondo chuckled. Parts of him were waking up that he'd put away for a long time. There was music in the fight, just like in everything else. He shuffled his feet, feeling the groove. He lifted his fists, shoulders down, arms loose, and fed a little more energon to the glowing spikes sticking out from his knuckles.

Butcher smashed his weapons together, showering sparks, and charged again.

“C'mon baby,” Mondo softly sang, “Get down, get down get down...” he braced to catch Butcher's rush.

“Do a little dance!” He sang loud, the words powering a left hook to Butcher's jaw while he writhed past the chopper's clumsy, brutish blows.

“Make a little love!” Right snap-back to Snarl's face.

“Get down tonight!” Right windmill down on the 'Ceptic's head, staggering him. Mondo did a little boxer's dance. “Whoo baby! Get down tonight! Diggin' it! Dig it with a tasty groove!” 

“Do a little dance!” He caught Butcher's incoming meathook on his forearm.

“Make a little love!” Straight right to the pig's face, spiking him through one eye. The 'Ceptic roared, lurching back, but was pinned by his own meathook caught on Mondo's arm.

Mondo hauled back one leg for a daywrecker kick.

“Get dow—ow!” Teeth and claws dug into his ankle, crushing armor and digging deep. Snarl growled, jaws locked, and yanked Mondo back by the leg. He staggered, pulled out like a Stretch Armstrong between Snarl and Butcher's hook. Butcher hefted his cleaver to live up to his name.

“Bogus!” with a lithe wriggle Mondo slipped from the hook and danced back. The cleaver cut a long, shallow gouge across his chest, shattering the windshield. Hissing, Mondo spun, shaking his leg, and kicked the cur loose. He backpedaled, grabbing for his necklace. “Man, you squares really screw with my mojo!”

Snarl came at him, a bristling ball of canine fury and steel. Mondo unclasped his necklace, snapped it out, and whipped Snarl out of the air with the bladed medallion. Without a pause, the old killer instincts singing through his heart, Mondo cracked the chain-whip left, shattering Butcher's elbow, then lashed it around Snarl's neck.

“ _Come together..._ ” sang Mondo.

Butcher staggered to his feet.

The beads certainly weren't wood. Whirring, grinding teeth popped out of the beads, chopping and gnawing through Snarl's armor. Mondo snapped the whip up, twirling the howling Snarl over his head as the gnashing links bit deeper and deeper. She tried to shift, but every move she made just invited the whip to coil tighter.

“ _Right now..._ ”

Butcher leaped, hook raised high. Mondo ducked and lunged, cranking the whip with his whole body, and slammed Snarl into Butcher's face, swatting him down in a hail of shrapnel and sparks. 

“ _Over me!_ ”

Mondo heaved, jerking Snarl up, snapping her straight back, then forward overhead, rending the last members of her neck. He smashed her corpse down, shattering her remains on the ground between him and Butcher. He snapped the chain-whip, returning the medallion to his hands. “Wild, man! I haven't felt like this in forever! I gotta thank you for that, pig.”

Still prone, Butcher stared into Snarl's lifeless eyes. “Wha... what?”

“You got my soul pumpin' heavy, heavy rhythms, ya dig? I gotta thank ya before I break ya.”

Groaning, growling, Butcher pushed himself to his knees, to his feet. Mechanicals whirred and jinked in his mangled sword-arm, broken ends seeking to reconnect with their mates. The arm jerked, and the massive cleaver shook in his hand. He could barely lift it, and surely couldn't swing it. He stared Mondo down, shocked into wariness by the flower-clad robot's brutal onslaught. He glared down at Snarl's corpse, toed her lifeless head. “I thought... I thought you weren't a fighter. I thought you were a coward.”

Mondo snapped the slack chain between his fists. “I dodged the war cuz it was a stupid fight, but I was made for grinding little assholes like you. This is real cut-and-dry.” He twirled the weighted end of the chain. “You're a pig, and I got no qualms about makin' you squeal!” He hoisted the whirling chain high, lunged, and threw.

It was a perfect cast. Mondo could see the calculations, the vectors and forces blossoming around the twirling, arching chain like petals on the wind, a visual overlay of harmony and inevitability. Each clicking blade along the length of his chain was a song of a million inter-related forces, adding up to a groovy choir of reality. Something like a cool wind blew through his core. This was it, a moment where he tapped into something greater, wider than himself.

“Wild...”

Butcher roared, shattering the song with discord, with raw metal distortion. He caught the medallion with his hook, interrupting the cast.

Mondo didn't quake. He was connected, open to the ever-changing vectors of the universe. He could handle anything. He planted a foot, shifted his hips, prepared to give just the right tug that would restore the song, would haul Butcher into a one-way trip onto his fist. The message was already written; he was just carrying the--

Butcher's shoulder cannon popped up, he took a bead, and blew off half of Mondo's face. Two more shots to the chest knocked him back, staggering, graceless. The song fell apart, dropped from his control. Butcher planted his right foot and braced the hilt of his cleaver on his bent knee. In the same moment he twisted his hook, locking the medallion in its grip, and heaved. He lifted his left leg high, planted a foot on the chain, and stomped. Off-balance, Mondo lurched forward, collapsing to his knees, driving himself onto the end of butcher's upraised cleaver.

It wasn't a pointed weapon. The blunt end punched through his chest like a battering ram, shattering glass and torturing metal. Butcher braced his wounded sword-arm against his torso, sank his hook into Mondo's shoulder, and heaved, driving the glowing blade home. It punched out of Mondo's back, carrying flickering bits of his energon core with it.

Mondo stared over Butcher's shoulder, off at the horizon, reaching for the last notes of the song. “Uh... I can see for... miles and... miles and...”

Butcher watched the bigger transformer's eyelights fade, snorted, and shoved him off. Mondo collapsed, a lifeless heap of brightly-painted slag.

+++++

Terry bull-rushed Carrion, battering her with his helmeted head, wrapping his arms around her and shoving her away from Pavi. She screamed and battered at him, her crude clamp-hands hammering his back. He had no idea what he was doing, just knew that he wanted to do _something_ , couldn't just stand back and watch Pavi get his ass kicked.

Carrion dug her clawed feet into the dirt, halting his rush, and kicked up with one spiny, gleaming, blade-tipped knee.

It didn't hurt when she pierced his skin. The blade was too fast, cold and sharp for pain. It was was more like a bit of his belly just froze. The spike pierced his abdominal wall, sliced its way through some pretty vital stuff. He choked at the nausea, the sharp disorientation of knowing that something just was not right.

“Huh...” he said. Carrion gave the spike a little twitch. _Okay, not the best decision I've ever made._

“ _Va' fa' un culo, battona diabolica!_ ” Pavi's voice came from somewhere behind and impossibly far away.

Terry opened his eyes, still staring down, and saw Pavi's arm, shifting into its cannon form, rushing in from his periphery. Pavi shoved it hard into Carrion's belly, worming the barrel deep into a chink in her armor.

_Hey, I did that before... to him!_

Through the wall of pain and the icy numbness in his belly that was starting to burn, Terry remembered the weight of the gun in his hand. With casual ease, he lifted the barrel and jammed it into another gap in her armor. He made sure to angle it upward, so the blast would take out some real choice inner bits.

“ _Ciao, uccello ripugnante!_ ”

“This how you like it?” croaked Terry, smiling with bloody lips.

They fired together.

Terry didn't know if the blast knocked him back, or if Carrion kicked him away. All he knew was that when he pushed himself up from the dirt, she was squirming on the ground, bellowing. There was a little bit of something twisted and twitching connecting her torso to her hips, but it wasn't much. Not enough for her to walk with, apparently.

Pavi dropped to his knees next to Terry. He looked up into the robot's eyes. Pavi's face was mangled, his handlebar mustache hanging in pieces, one eye out, everything scored and sullied by Carrion's claws.

Terry smiled. “I ever tell you yer pretty?”

Pavi chuckled. “Eh, I ever tell ya look like-a twice-bake stronzo?” He looked at Terry's belly. “Thassa no good, right?”

Terry touched his belly. His fingertips flirted at the edge of the puncture, but he stopped probing before he fainted. His hand came away soaked. “Eh... if we're gonna do anything, we better do it before the shock wears off, and I start crying like a girl.”

Pavi helped him up a little, then he helped Pavi. Between the two of them they managed to stand, and hobbled over toward the crate, passing wide around Carrion as she screamed and thrashed on the ground, dagging her legs behind her.

The thunder warned them, the sound of locomotive footstomps shattering asphalt behind them. It didn't warn them enough. Butcher rushed them like a bull, a snorting, wounded bundle of rage. “OUT OF MY WAY RATS!”

Butcher should have played football. His toe caught Pavi under the backpack and launched them over the crate. Terry lost his grip and fell hard on his side. Something tore. Pavi landed behind him with a crunch and a sickening _whirrl_ as something vital broke itself apart. 

Terry started to scream, but that hurt even worse, so he just hissed and curled around his belly, trying to press the pain away.

Butcher stepped up to the crate and lifted his cleaver high. A runner of raw energon coursed up the edge of the blade, and he brought it down.

The box came apart when the cleaver hit. It didn't dent or smash into pieces. It somehow reacted to the energy coursing through the cleaver, and what once had seemed crystalline blew outward in a wave of light and heat. Something heavy landed in Terry's arms, and he wrapped himself around it, tucking in tight to shield himself from the dazzling blast.

“Hur hur...”

Terry cracked one eye open. Butcher had chopped down right on the QRT, and held it pinned to the ground with the end of his cleaver. He dropped the weapon and picked the orb up, a focal-point of self-masticating space/time. It looked even worse outside of the box, like what a quantum mathematician would see on military-grade LSD.

Something squirmed in Terry's arms. He felt things, like little feelers, growing up his arms and nosing at his chest.

Butcher lifted the orb. “Hur hur... hehehe. Old Megatron, you should see me now!” His chest segments opened. Feelers constructed of light and sparks wormed their way out from the orb, reaching for Butcher's chest and face. “You'll see me, asshole. Everyone will see me.” He closed the orb up inside his chest. “AND EVERYONE WILL BOW!” His eyes dimmed for a moment, then flared brighter. “OH HELL YEAH!”

It was like gravity doubled, then trippled around Butcher. The world shifted, and things started falling toward him. Butcher became the _down_ in a growing gravitational field. Darkness welled around him as light fell into Hurricane Butcher.

The probing feelers prodded Terry's stomach, his face, clustered around his eyes. Terry thought he heard whispers, some kind of buzzing in his mind, like static, growing to a pattern. It was a call, seeking an answer. He looked down, recognized the gleaming fractal in his hands.

Through the hazy, glowing crystal, he had seen an hourglass shape. One shape, he had assumed.

_Two! There were two!_

Two orbs. When Butcher hit the one, the other had shot out like a billiard ball, right into Terry's arms. In the flash from the exploding box, Butcher probably hadn't seen a thing.

“ Uffa! Tsack me with a dumptruck, zees scaddabush hurts!”

Terry rolled over. Pavi looked little better than Carrion. He tried to rise in the howling wind, but his legs only jerked and spasmed. Something snapped, and molten bits dripped from a hole in his side.

“Ai! _Andate tutti a 'fanculo!_ ” He pounded his legs, slamming them against the ground. Furious, but unable to rise.

Terry crawled toward Pavi, shutting his eyes against the gale. Whatever was happening to Butcher, it was big. The only thing escaping the vortex was Butcher's laughter.

“SON OF A BITCH, THIS IS WHAT I'M TALKIN' ABOUT!”

Terry struggled closer, crawling on knees and elbows, dirt and grit flying in his face. He kept his head down. He opened his eyes to see the Orb's tendrils, diaphanous threads of amber light and visible sound, whispering over and _entering_ him, slipping through pores on his skin. His skin glowed in a spider-web pattern. He blinked. Those were his _nerves!_ The thing was lighting up his nervous system.

He heard clicks and sighs in a stacatto rhythm... heard, though his ears had nothing tro do with it. Patterns formed in his head, shapes and pulses. Some of the jibberish started to make sense. 2, 4, 8, 16... 3, 9, 81... Something like a Gaelic drumbeat. As he recognized patterns, a warming grew, a feeling like seeing an old friend in a crowd, a feeling which grows when they see you, and you both see the brightening on each-others' faces. 

_It's... it's trying to make contact!_

His elbow slipped, and he went down, aggravating the wound in his belly. He screamed, but fought his way back up. He couldn't stop now. He struggled forward, leaking badly. He saw something hanging out of his shirt, an outside which most definitely needed to be an inside.

_Don't trip on that Terry. Don't trip and tangle and start pulling pulling--_ “ Owww! Jesus this hurts!”

“Terry!” shouted Pavi. “Stop! You gonna hurta yourself bad!”

“It has to communicate!”

“You killa youself! Hold still!”

“It's looking for you, Pavi. The patterns! They seek a mind to guide them!”

Pavi pushed up on one elbow to look at him, reaching out with his free hand. He stopped shouting. “What? Terry, what kinda crazy scaddabusha you goin'--”

With a final kick, Terry shoved himself forward, slapping the QRT against Pavi's chest. The shifting, formless fractal shapes accelerated, squirming, forming and fading faster. A node of light burrowed into Pavi, shining along his own rigid, right-angled neural pathways, working their way up toward his head.

“Uffa! Whatta ze macaroni izza you ooooohhhhhhh...”

Like Butcher, Pavi's eyelight dimmed, then flared... and then Terry's mind exploded.

  



	17. Limitless

Chapter  
17: Limitless

“Exploded,” that is, as in “expanded rapidly to fill the environment.” His mind, his awareness, blew outward, taking in all around him.

Sentience. He saw it. This is what the Quantum Resonance Tuner sought. It was made to connect with strong-enough minds, to give them access to the sub-molecular coding of local reality, to reach down past the wave/particle duality horizon and _change_ things.

Awareness of sentience translated into a visible aura; this was a “language” his mind could understand. He saw himself, and Pavi, lying crumpled on the ground. Butcher standing, arms upraised, swelling in the center of a pan-dimensional gravity well. He saw Carrion, scrabbling in the dirt, howling like a wolf. Then the vortex took her. She did not end; Butcher wouldn't let her. He had a use for her. A desire. He took her under his power and roared laughter.

The QRT was made for a mind more like Pavi's, a swift calculating engine, so Pavi was faster to understand, to access, to _use_ _._ He set to work.

Pain ended first. Terry didn't know how he was a part of this, a part of Pavi, but they shared a mentality now. They were aware of each other, shared their thoughts, but were still discreet. He was aware of Pavi's body, of the warning lights and red status alerts, and saw them all fade. He was aware of himself, a discreet entity in a carbon-based biological improbability of a structure. He cataloged a million pains, patched them up, and turned them off.

Then there was growing.

All of reality was interrelated, just different representations of the same subatomic states of being. Wave. Particle. Velocity. Vector. Perception. Imagination. The Quantum Resonance Tuner was simple; it gave a mind access to the smallest level of influence over the state of things.

It let you pull the strings of creation.

The first growth was in Pavi. He restructured the nature of his biomass processor, turned it into a energon core, and filled it with a spark.

Energon was energy, altered at the quantum level to attain certain matter-like properties, such as fluidity or solidity. Energy made into a dense, portable pseudo-material, not produced on-demand by fallible atomic or chemical reactions, but just _there_. Always. A rare thing in the natural environment, and highly unstable. But when found, it could be tapped by careful machinations, by energon cores, to drip long life into a well-designed machine. The soul of a transformer.

This was the secret of the Primes, what set them apart from the rest of the race. They had the knowledge to affect sub-quantum changes, in a limited way. They could create energon, and devices through which it could be made. They alone could design and modify the quantum-flux cores at the heart of each hatchling, which would shape its growth and set its limits.

This was why they repressed the QRT. It destroyed control, removed them from the equation, gave any individual the potential for unlimited growth. But more than that. Terry could see it already. Unimpeeded, the QRT could give a single life power to grow beyond any universe, to take all of existence from all parallel realities. It would grow and grow and grow until, inevitably, it would meet another, growing at the same rate, from some other reality somewhere across the spectrum of probability. Such a meeting was not likely to be be peaceful. Simple, natural competition would play out on a pan-universal scale. All would be consumed, and ended, in a titanic, boundless, stupid brawl.

No mind imaginable could handle that kind of power more sensibly. Terry couldn't even imagine a mind that could imagine a mind that could.

But this was a difference between human and transformer minds, or perhaps just between Pavi and Terry. Terry was open to exploring the conceptual extremes of possibility offered by this device. Pavi was more attuned to _acting_.

First he re-coded the immediate matter, absorbing rock and dirt and re-shuffling atoms into a simple shell to shelter them from the storm. Terry watched in awe as Pavi expanded his own mental capacity to simultaneously see to observing the shifting world and seeing to their wounds. Pavi settled them into the shell, making a creche for them, with the QRT nestled between them.

Pavi doubled the size and power of his new core, then doubled it again, Pulling in power from parallel realities, re-coding it to semi-material energon, and sending it pouring through his growing body. He reached across the planes of probability into a state where a suitable body existed, and pulled it to him, wrapping it around their shell like a old overcoat.

Terry's consciousness encompassed all things around him. As Pavi pulled in matter and energy, Terry also drew on the power of the Quantum Resonance Tuner. It gave the wielder access to all aspects of probability, to all the turnings of reality; access to reach in, to cross, to use. Terry thought with innumerable parallels of his own mind, minds of all the other Terrys across the fields of parallel probability.

He would have asked:

\--How is this possible?--

But he knew.

\--All the building blocks of creation are the same, just different turnings of the same potential. The Quantum Resonance Tuner does nothing more than enable one to turn quanta as one wishes.--

To which he thought:

\--Freakin'-A.--

Pavi interjected: --Uffa! Butcher'sa back!--

The vortex around Butcher settled, dust and stones halting their flight and raining down. But a vortex of light remained. It was like a black smudge through the air. The morning was bright and full now, working up to hot, but light twisted and swirled around a focal point, sinking into a dark void. Butcher was tapping the energy around him, building his power. 

The vortex stopped. Sunlight filled the void. Butcher stood up, facing the sun. He was himself, a hulking mechanical monstrosity nearly forty feet high, standing at the center of a shallow crater; the void left by the material he had consumed. He roared and slapped his blades together; hook and cleaver, composed of pure energon.

Pavi's own vortex ended, and he stood above the settling dust, just as tall. “Ai, you _schifo stronzo!_ ” He grabbed his crotch and flipped the bird. “Ya wanna kick me again? Or mebbe just gimme _lo squalo_ like-a you momma last night!”

Butcher jerked, startled, turned to face them. “What the-- Where'd you come fr--”

“ You missa zee sale? Eez BOGO for QRTs, _carogna_.” Pavi's arm warped into a cannon fit for a battleship. “Now grabba you knees, effe. I gotta _brajole_ made justa special fa' you!”

It didn't matter if Butcher had ever installed a translation program or not. Realities of anatomy and reproduction didn't figure. All that mattered was that Butcher was a bully, and the wimp had just taunted him. Butcher rushed them.

Butcher dodged Pavi's first shot. The screaming ball of plasma took off the top of a hill. Butcher countered with blasts from twin shoulder-cannons. As soon as the shots came close Terry _caught them_ , conceptually, at least. He warped the flow of time, just another aspect of reality to play with, slowed things down long enough for him to re-code the immolating sunstuff particle-by-particle. He just made a small change; trajectory. The twin shots reversed course like rebounding dodgeballs, and took off Butcher's leg. 

“Noooo!” he roared as he crashed at their feet.

\--Fancy work, meatball!--

\--I'm having a hard time figuring out what we _can't_ do! Watch out!--

Butcher's body collapsed into a swirl of lightning and raw power, a new vortex. He took more into himself and rose from the maelstrom, towering higher right in front of them. He brought that hook down, digging deep into their neck, then hacked down with his cleaver, hewing their arm off.

“ _Carogna!_ ”

Pavi blasted off Butcher's hook – and his hand with it – picked up their severed arm and clubbed Butcher in the side of the head with it.

Butcher re-grew his hand, and swelled larger still. Material and energy pulled in from miles around, pulling from the ground, leaving a growing crater, a low-pressure void in the air, a space dim and cold as all energy rushed into Butcher. Pavi danced back. Before Terry could object, he accessed the QRT again, increasing his core, pumping himself full of unrealistically potent energon, and swelling larger.

\--You guys are going to suck up the whole valley, at this rate!--

\--Eez over justa soon I whip zees jerkoff!--

The two brawlers closed range again, confoundingly huge metal beasts. They moved slowly, constrained by the limits of mechanical design at this scale. Terry re-sculpted Pavi's body as the two titans brawled; the robot wanted to stay a robot, to keep a familiar form, but metal mechanics could only do so much. There was no need for them, as far as Terry could see. What you wanted was motion. Metal joints only wasted effort. So Pavi kept his form, like some great knight, but shone like a god as Terry remade him with joints of lightning and sculpted force. Pavi sprang forward, nimble again, and tore into Butcher.

\--Grazi! You brilliant, Terry!--

The wounded brute staggered back, then copied Terry's innovation, reforming himself as a new machine, a hybrid of matter and energy given form. They grappled again, ninja-quick on the scale of giants. Each step was like a bunker-buster hitting home, cracking the earth. They struck with claws and blades, storms of energy, swarms of burrowing kamikazi drones invented on the spot. They both swelled larger with each wound, pushing themselves to new limits to crush the other.

Butcher hurtled forward, propelling himself on a tsunami of surging earth, and tackled them, rolling, snapping, slashing and blasting. They tussled over a line of hills and down into the next valley. Butcher pinned them down, transformed his fist into a whirring cluster of jagged blades, a drill-bit that could swallow the borer at Yucca Mountain without noticing, and slammed it down at their belly, where their sentient core shone as brightly to Butcher as his did to them. Pavi caught the bit with his bare hands. It was like throwing butter in a blender; pain erupted like a supernova as their arms flew in pieces across the landscape.

Just as the bit scraped into their chest-plate, terry _grabbed_ them, copied their joint sentience core and translated them across the valley. Butcher's drill cored deep into the earth, ripping through the empty shell they left behind. Terry set them down across the valley in a previous, smaller form. Much of their energy and material was lost in the translation trick, but they and the QRT remained, safe inside their common body. Some of the excess material crackled around them in a corona of energy waiting for a form.

\--You guys are going to tear this place apart!--

\--Well, why donna you helpa me fight? You so smart, help me tear zees _babaluke's_ head off!--

Pavi took control, started sucking in mass and energy, reshaping reality, swelling to titanic stature and coiling to spring at their foe.

Terry understood. They didn't have the most nimble imaginations, but they did have perfect memories. Butcher remembered a lifetime of war, of endless brutality. But he wasn't very big or powerful, for a transformer. He'd gathered some minions of his own through trickery, but even that had never raised him far in Megatron's eyes. He'd always been another grunt. Once he'd dreamed of strength to gain respect and stature. Now all he wanted was power to control. And he had it; he could be as big and mean as he wanted.

Pavi had had it even worse; aware like a sentient, but considered little more than a lab-rat. A quirky experiment. Not a real transformer, not a worthwhile warrior. He had to eat. He got tired. He had no soul. He was just a joke, a little, weak joke. But he'd dreamed of acceptance, of being someone worthy. Now he had worth, as much as he could imagine.

It was a bad mix, no doubt about it. They were both just going to keep getting bigger until one of them lost... but both had limitless resources. They didn't have savvy, or subtlety, they both just wanted to be freakin' huge, big enough to break anything that had ever crossed them, would ever cross them. It would never end. In seconds they would be throwing atomic explosions at each other. They could consume the Earth in minutes if they wanted. They were both riding high on power, and weren't about to come down.

_All right,_ thought Terry, _I'm so smart apparently. So what do I do?_

He could still see signs of Carrion, trapped deep within Butcher, but she didn't have access to his QRT. He was just holding on to her out of brute possessiveness. She was his, and he wouldn't let her go, wouldn't let her die. It jonesed him to hold power over others.

_So our species aren't so different._

But Terry had access. He didn't worry about bulking up, trying to out-brute Butcher. He expanded his mental capacity further, ran a full analysis of the QRT and its capabilities, while simulating hundreds of parallel scenarios to test theories and choose the best outcomes.

This was a wild, vast mind. He was worried he'd lose himself in all the super-conductive smarts. He was going to need one hell of a drink if he ever got back into his own human limitations.

Meanwhile, Pavi and Butcher rejoined the fight. The earth shook as they clashed, trading blows measured in megatons. The land boiled with each missed shot. Thunder cracked in the wake of limbs the size of warships, hurtling through the air way faster than anything that big should.

Terry finished his projections, formed a plan, and didn't let himself stop to consider just how insane it was, just how insane everything was.

\--Get close. Grapple!--

\--You wanna give him a hug?--

\--Trust me. Let me steer!--

\--Si! You gots it meatball.--

Pavi coiled up, gathering explosive force below them, and launched into the air. For a moment they were eye-to-eye with a very confused vulture. Then Pavi re-vectored their thrust, and they hurtled back to Earth.

“ Ai ugly!!! Wanna tarantella widda real spider?” Pavi whipped their limbs away from their body, splitting each into a trio of lashing cords, barbed with snicking sawblades of kinetic force. They hurtled into Butcher, wrapping around him like a net, with enough force to send a shockwave of debris over the hills. Pavi grinned in Butcher's face. “Hey effe, Papa wants somma lovin'!” Then he transformed his head into a giant maw, and gnashed Butcher's face. His whip-arms coiled tighter, blades slashing deep, writhing and snapping at any stray bits Butcher tried to worm loose.

Terry ignored their antics and focused his awareness into a tiny point. From somewhere in their belly, Terry snaked out, riding the end of a delicate tendril, semi-organic, semi-energetic. _Let the bots out-big each other. The smallest raindrop can wear down the mountain. 'Least, that's what the fortune cookie said._

He snaked into Butcher's body, boring pinholes when he needed to pass through, disturbing nothing, slipping silently deeper and deeper, to the QRT.

He passed near Carrion, close enough for her to notice the little tendril of light. She was a part of Butcher, melded into his superstructure, so she couldn't move. But she could scream.

“ BUTCHER! BUTCHERRRRRRRR!!!”

Terry moved close. There was no need for brutality, for power. He could make or unmake at will, so he could afford to be gentle. He touched her throat and deleted her vocal systems and transmitters. 

“Hush, doll. This won't take long.”

Carrion writhed, enraged but helpless.

Terry reached deeper as the world broke apart outside, crumbling under the assault of beings torn from the pages of wildest myth.

The Quantum Resonance Tuner allowed the wielder to affect only its immediate environment, a short way beyond touching range. The interplay of unnamed forces extended that range in proportion to the size of the wielder, but could not easily pierce the “bubble” of influence of another QRT. So Terry could not just mentally _reach_ in and alter Butcher, not without _physically_ reaching in.

And so he snaked and burrowed, deeper and deeper, while Pavi kept him busy. Terry was little more than a stray bacteria. Butcher had no attention for such fine details as a few stray atoms and photons worming through his body, to his chest, to his core.

Two energon reactors the size of big-rigs stood in a V-twin formation, pumping out enough power for all of Vegas. Butcher had built a little shrine-like creche for his Quantum Resonance Tuner at the apex of this power structure.

After a few minutes of experiencing limitless potential, Terry was shocked to remember just how delicate and small a thing the QRT was, even now that he understood it. At the heart of it, the device was just one chameleon quanta, an unstable harmonizing string that never could exist under natural circumstances. It had the capability of mimicking any local quanta, establishing an entanglement, and changing it. It was a microscopic device. The rest of the psychedelic recursive-fractal gizmo was all supportive equipment; molecular control computers, basic coding, containment field generators, and the like. It was bigger than it looked, and hard to comprehend, because it was built and operated in at least six dimensions beyond the normal three.

Terry mentally shuddered. Zortronicon had been some kind of genius savant. _No wonder they hushed him up._

He reached the QRT, entangled its core pseudo-quanta with his own, and turned it into a simple quark.

The effect was instantaneous. The writhing fractal-form froze into a lump of glass. Butcher's roar of rage echoed through his body. He was aware of the loss of power instantaneously. He was still a titanic beast with godlike powers, but he couldn't grow anymore.

Terry retreated his consciousness back into his and Pavi's joint body.

The two giants had done a fair number on each other, tearing at each other with plasma founts, explosive ruptures, and good old-fashioned teeth. Pavi had exercised a little more intelligence than Butcher, employing some predictive simulation to prepare reactions to counter-strikes before Butcher even initiated them. But mostly they'd just focused on beating the hell out of each other.

And making a freaking mess. The landscape was ruined with blasted, molten craters and burn marks, footprints like geological formations, and the strange, unburnt, hemispherical bites carved out of the landscape by hungry growing mechanical gods. The wind was high and the light was low from the mass/energy vortex that had formed around the two combatants.

Terry gave Pavi a mental prod. --Let him go and take him down.--

\--Freakin' right!--

Pavi loosed his coiling arms and leaped back from the wounded Butcher. Snapping, bladed steel tentacles writhed, twitched and folded back into gleaming, nobly-armored limbs, coursing with power. Pavi still looked like something that would transform into a scooter, but it would be the sickest, sexiest, high-techiest scooter ever, green and chrome segments held together by golden light and willfull force, a “machine” that pushed the limits of the word. Not to mention bigger than a six-pack of earthmovers.

But he was still the same Pavi, balanced on claw-toothed wheels, bobbing like a boxer, handlebar mustache with the wingspan of a private jet angled up and jaunty. He snapped out his whirring buzzsaws and held them loose, like a back-alley tough with a switchblade. He gestured to Butcher, taunting him forward. “Ai, _figlio di lavatrice_ , comma get eet!”

Butcher's QRT was gone, but he was still a hulking powerhouse. He came at them like a fist of the gods, eyes locked on their chest, thinking only one thing – Butcher wanted to tear their heart out, and take it for himself.

He didn't stand a chance. Pavi and Terry controlled infinite potential, and were fluid. Butcher was just really big, and stagnant.

Pavi zipped aside on his wheels, side-scooting Butcher's bull-rush, twirled around and caught him in the back with a round-house kick that slapped him face-first to the ground.

The earth shook, and an earthquake-scale shockwave whipped out.

Pavi leaped from the crest of the shockwave and came down on Butcher's back, driving his spinning blades down through Butcher's arm.

Terry took over the QRT, leaving Pavi to his fun. While he took Butcher apart, Terry focused on putting things together. Pavi still wanted to consume generally, to fuel himself. Terry put a stop to that, put the landscape off limits, and directed the acquisition of new material more discreetly.

Pavi sawed off Butcher's arm. Terry lifted it up, broke it open, and grafted it onto their shared body, shifting components to new purposes, converting much of it to raw energy.

Butcher threw them off and staggered up, one-armed and pissed, and charged again. Pavi activated his new, stolen parts, sprouting counter-rotating chainsaw blades.

Within their core, Terry built his own new parts. Basic understanding of the fundamental properties of the Quantum Resonance Tuner carried implications (at least in a mind that suddenly out-classed any theoretical super-computer to date by about a zillion years) about the nature of existence, and the relation of time to the other dimensions. All states of existence existed in parallel, including the states of “just a little bit ago.” When you got right down to it, time was just something small minds made up to organize things and stave off implosive insanity.

Terry constructed a mannequin, a lifeless collection of organic material, and made a last-moment swap. The last moment was time enough for him. He made a swap, and another, and another...

Blinking, gawping, Braithwait appeared on the ridge over the battleground, snatched from one breath away from death. He fell to his knees, unable to take his eyes off the clashing giants, unable to understand where he was, or why. Around him appeared Alisha, DARPA scientists, guardsmen borrowed from the military, the trucker, the pilots, civillians, all those who had been killed as a result of the QRT's discovery.

They stood, minds reeling with the memory of their own deaths, and watched in primal awe as one god took the life of another.

+++++

Pavi skated, crouching low, meeting Butcher's rush, and dancing past, making one clean swipe. He spun to watch Butcher stagger, one arm pinwheeling, trying to catch his balance with one leg missing. Pavi hefted the severed member. “Ai, Boootcher. You keepa losin' these.” He held the leg out. “You wannit back?”

Butcher teetered, hesitated, began to reach for his leg.

Pavi darted back. “Oop, _scherzo_! Justa kidding!” He twirled. Terry reached into the leg, entangled it, and transformed it, grafting it onto Pavi's arm, components flipping and clicking into place, molecules turning to a new purpose. Pavi finished his turn, switching his feet back-and-forth in a roller-disco shuffle, hoisted his new sun-thrower, and blew Butcher off his feet.

All the while, Terry kept up control of the finer forces at play: fetching the fallen back from the jaws of death; projecting a shielding cone to protect them from the glare and radioactive backwash from the solar flare cannon; breaking down unneeded mass and energy to fuel their every moment without scouring any more scoops out of his planet; broadcasting warnings on all bandwidths; patching the ruined earth as they passed over.

It was just too much, he thought. Too much power. He was bringing people back from the _dead_ , but how long could someone wield that kind of power without using it the wrong way? He could find everyone who ever died a wrong death, and bring them back. He could find anyone who ever should not have lived, and erase them. Nothing good could come from that. He limited himself to undoing the deaths caused by the presence of the QRT, and left it at that.

Pavi approached the slag-heap, Mt. Butcher. There was something left of his face, broken bits held together by charred cable and twisted metal. Molten rivers poured down through his cavernous body. One energon reactor from his v-twin setup was completely dead, the fuel dripping, burning away into the air. The other was dimming fast. 

+++++

Mondo popped into the air off to Braithwait's right and fell onto his rump. He screamed for second, grabbing his chest. Then he stopped, blinked, took in where he was, what he was seeing, and how un-perforated his chest was.

“Whoa... heavy man...”

+++++

Butcher turned his head, eyelights winking in and out, fluids squirting from cracked pipes, and snarled at Pavi/Terry. “H-h- how... you... rats...” He heaved, trying to lift his arm. Bits shifted, clanking, trying to form some useful weapon or another.

Pavi pinned the arm under his foot and restructured his cannon-arm. Segments rained down from the cannon as he cut them loose, leaving a long blade of swirling, greyish, eye-numbing light. Terry analyzed Pavi's creation and smiled at the ingenuity. It wasn't a blade, but a wedge of warped space-time, a wormhole with an ever-shifting exit coordinate. When Pavi struck, bits of Butcher were going to end up scattered all across the cosmos.

“We zee rats?” said Pavi. “But here-a you lie, trash on ze ground. So wazzat make-a you?” He pressed the tip of the blade onto Butcher's ruined, cratered chest. Little particles of the brute _szzing_ ed across the universe. “A leetle, steaming _stronzo_ , dassa what. More dan zat, it make-a you dead.”

Pavi flexed to shove he blade home.

Terry acted between moments.

\--My turn.--

Between one second and the next, he pulled three final entities across the void. Then he started unmaking.

Butcher's body bled away, scraps and atoms flitting off, re-settling to where they once had been; stone, dirt, scrub, roadway. He erased the scars, filled the craters, scrubbed the radioactive pollution, turned back the clock, diminishing Butcher down and down.

\--Uffa! Terry, whatta gives?--

He felt Pavi in their shared consciousness. 

_Trust/mistrust/confusion/anger/inquiry._

Pavi was poised to wrestle for control with _Terry_. It would all play out again, the whole battle, but within the same body. 

Terry wouldn't let that happen. --It's too powerful, Pavi. We can't keep it.--

\--But, I was just about to--

\--I know. The fight is over. There's no more need for destruction. Trust me. We need to set things right, then give up the QRT. It's too much for anyone, for anything.--

\--C'mon. I would be good, I promise.--

\--You would consume everything, and leave room for no one else. So would I, if I let us go any further.--

Butcher vanished. Terry started working on them, diminishing their shared body, pushing them down through their nested iterations, smaller and smaller, settling the stolen mass and energy back into its natural state, rebuilding the ruined earth from their body.

Pavi sighed. --Si. You got it right, meatball.--

They settled onto their own feet, just down the slope from the spectators. They held the QRT between them. Terry held a sledgehammer over his shoulder. Its head glowed, swirling with a malestrom of chaotic forces.

Butcher and his Bitches stood just down the slope from them.

Pavi flinched, shoved the QRT at Terry, and readied his weapons.

Butcher stared at his hands, watched them flex. “I don't understand. Why did you bring me back? Why did you save us?”

Pavi built up a charge. “Si! I kinda wonderin' dat too!”

Terry smiled. “Justice.”

Butcher snorted. “You want me to stand trial? You're out of your defective, meaty head.” He raised his cannon. “Gimme that orb!” He fired.

Terry didn't flinch. A bouquet popped out from the end of the barrel. “No,” he said. “I made you. There could be a bomb in your head.”

Butcher stopped, eyes dimming as he ran diagnostics. “You put a bomb--”

“No. I thought about it.” He grinned, “ But then I thought, wouldn't it be even better if I just removed those shunts from Carrion and Snarl. Take the collars off the Bitches, as it were.”

“ Huh?”

Carrion hissed. She and Snarl locked gazes, quicker on the uptake than Butcher. They howled, turned, and struck.

Terry turned his back as the fur flew. “When the dust settles, we'll give the Bitches the opportunity to run.”

Pavi shrugged. “Eh, si. Probably best we put them down, but I getta you point.”

Terry walked up toward the gaping spectators.

Mondo bellowed, “Hooo man, that was wiiild. You played the cosmos like a ukelale. Dude. Un _real!_ ”

“When you getta so deep-smart?” said Pavi.

Terry smirked. “During a brief interlude when I had the processing power of a galaxy.”

Pavi's eyes settled on the QRT, shimmering with its reflected light. “Zee power, eez callin' to me. Eez a hard ting to give up.”

Braithwait stepped closer and held out his hands. “That should come with us. Thank you for your service, but now we've got to secure that artifact for good.”

“Hmm... no.” Terry dropped the QRT and, before anyone could stop him, brought the sledgehammer down on it.

It was the last thing he'd made. The head of the hammer was more computer virus than anything else, encoded into semi-material, energy given mass-like properties, like energon and the QRT itself. The head smashed down through the living, writhing, space-twisting layers of the thing, undoing centuries of genius in a stroke. Light welled as the sledge crashed deeper, until the containment fields failed, and the single sympathetic semi-extant string at its core ceased to be. The remains of the QRT froze into a glass-like substance and shattered. The shards evaporated, bleeding away at the edges in brilliant motes of released energon.

Terry turned to the two robots, ignoring the gawping DARPA team. “Kindly tell your superiors to stop _losing important shit on my planet!_ Seriously!” He shook his head and walked away, down toward the restored road. “You guys are making a mess of the place.”

+++++

Terry settled back into his lawn chair in front of the ruins of his trailer. Somehow his fridge and his chairs had survived the attack. He passed a jar of homebrew to Pavi, and opened his own. The last two left, until he could get back to brewing.

Pavi sipped and sighed. “Still man, all zee tings you fixed, you couldna even fixa you home?”

Terry shook his head. “Too easy. That kind of power makes everything too easy. It took the meaning out of... well... everything. Besides,” he patted the modified gun, “gimme some time, and I'll have a good thing goin' for me. Gonna make a ruckus once I get this power-plant marketable. I can wait. I think I'll start with a line of compost-powered scooters.”

Pavi nodded. “Si, I tink I get it. Mebbe I can helpa you fix tings up?”

“Sure. I hate to say it, but I think you're welcome around here.”

Pavi snorted. “Eh, itta be a nice break. Eez gonna be double-crappy, goin' back to HQ, to bein' a freak, now zat I been more zan a Prima.”

Terry scowled at him. “Freak? You don't--”

“You know what Imma talkin' about, meatball.”

“Hmm... guess you didn't notice, after all the godhood and such.” He reached over and tapped Pavi's chest.

“Eh?” Pavi patted his chest, then opened a panel under his medallion.

“I left your bio-processor to give you a kick. And I couldn't deny someone coffee and beer once they'd tried them. But I figured I'd take the chance to work a little upgrade for you.”

Pavi stared down into his chest. The characteristic pinkish glow of energon spilled out. “Terry... I donna...”

Terry leaned back and sipped his beer. “I turned you into a real Italian. From now on you eat only for pleasure.”

  



End file.
